


1995

by LSRichards



Category: Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-15 01:14:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 23,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10547532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LSRichards/pseuds/LSRichards
Summary: In 1995, Anne Rice issued a statement that her most famous creation, The Vampire Lestat, left her. Here is where he went.





	1. THE WORLD BETWEEN

_Incroyable! Impossible! Inacceptable!_  
  
It just wasn't possible. That his...that _that, THAT!_ was going to be the only one. That despite a successful opening weekend—top of the box office!-- despite sequel material purchased and ready to go, despite the sequel being all about _him,_ that sequel would, impossibly, just not happen. _Louis'_ movie was going to be the only one made, _Louis_ ' version of events the only one placed before the world.  
  
She'd tried. He knew that. Everything that could have been done had been done. But _The Vampire Lestat_ was not going into production and that was that. No statement would be made, none needed, as the world's short attention span turned to the next premiere, the next splashy franchise, the next scandal or calamity. And he loved Louis, he knew that too. It wasn't his fault his movie would be the only one. But still, that this first film was going to be all the greater world would know on top of the shattering events he'd just undergone with Memnoch...no. No, no no. It was insufferable. Intolerable. _Unacceptable._  
  
So he left. Nothing to be done in her world, no movies in his...He made his arrangements: daylight guards for St. Elizabeth's, regular payments and emoluments seen to. Mortal lawyers and agents advised. Then he lay himself down on the worn wooden floor, unfocussed his eyes, breathed deep of the dusty, abandoned-building air, and Rose.  
  
The last thing: he found her. She was out walking, as she often did. She stopped in front the great glass windows of a car dealership. He wrapped his essence around her as he had so often, in love, and then, gently, he left.

  
  
It was easy. He'd brought himself and his money, and money makes so many things so easy. It was the Rock Star thing all over again, only this time it was Movie Star. He found an entertainment attorney, a slim, ambitious blonde named Cynthia. She found the agent, the manager, the publicist. They found the producer with the connections at the studio. The financing was already in place.  
  
A talented screenwriter was found, and a gifted composer/lyricist because you know what? Singing on that stage was one of the most exhilarating experiences he'd ever had, the movie would cover that era, so why not make it a rock musical?  
  
It didn't matter that no one knew but himself. It pleased him to have the secret. Maybe, someday, he'd tell them, but they had eons, hadn't they? And while there _were_ vampires in this place --he could feel them-- he did not know them and they did not know him. If they rose against him, outraged that a vampire should make his own movie as those in his world had been outraged by a vampire becoming a rock star, well: he'd handle them as he'd handled the others. And at least here, there was no ancient Queen to rise.  
  
So he threw himself into the novelty of it, and this new milieu embraced him right back. Sure, there were mortal eyes rolled when they were told he would not work at all during the day, fucking method actors, but then again this was the town that invented ballyhoo, cross-marketing, synergy. They loved a good snowjob.   
  
He'd planned to stick around only so long as the premiere, bask in that limelight, and, okay, maybe a few bourgeois screenings as well, incognito, see how the common folk liked it. But then this thing had happened, this wonderful thing. A small band of young movie-goers at an old, small cinema in Los Angeles had claimed it as their own, attending midnight screenings dressed as himself and the others, singing along with the songs, turning it into a sort of semi-private, yet utterly welcoming, club. He read the words in the newspaper article: _Like a vampiric Rocky Horror,_ _hundreds of besotted young mortals gather together week after week to worship the golden god on the screen and_ _tell him how much they love him._

He couldn't resist. He had to go. He phoned his publicist, and one warm Saturday night in 1995, they went.


	2. DEMONSTRATION

The tavern on the waterfront catered to an international clientele: men from Korean freighters carrying Chinese goods, men from Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong or Java. Men far from home and looking for a fast, cheap drunk. Men difficult to trace when they went missing.  
  
The door opened, spilling noise and light onto the dark street. Two men, an Asian of perhaps forty, tough and ropey; and an Anglo with dirty-blond hair, who couldn’t have been more than eighteen, underfed and slightly girlish, staggered out, reeling drunk. The Asian led the way to a nearby alley, then fumbled with the fly of his pants, swaying on his feet. At that, the younger man seemed suddenly sober, suddenly, not drunk at all. In fact, he’d been faking all night, plying his victim, and now, when he smiled, moonlight glinted off his fangs.  
  
There was no struggle. The sailor was far too outmatched to resist.  
  
Up the street, five people watched through the blacked-out windows of an unmarked van, a van with some kind of machinery attached to its roof. They were three middle-aged men in expensive suits, a younger, bearded man, and a sour-faced woman of perhaps thirty, her hair pulled back in a severe bun, an unflattering sweep of hair across her forehead. As the vampire sank his fangs, one of the older men spoke.  
  
“Is that…?” he said.  
“Sh!” the woman hissed. _“He can hear you.”_  
In silence they watched the two men embrace, and they watched the victim slump. “He killed him,” one of the older men breathed.  
“He had to,” the bearded man whispered back, and he opened a small computer, the screen of which displayed a single, glowing word: EXECUTE?  
  
Finished, the vampire released his victim, who dropped, dead, to the ground. The vampire lifted his victim’s wallet, then walked up the street toward his car, to get the chains and concrete blocks, pulling an electronic key from the pocket of his pants. He pointed the key at the car to pop the trunk, and as his finger hit the button, the man in the van hit ENTER.  
  
There was no struggle. A light on top of the van blinked on, and the vampire was aware of a sudden sensation of heat, as though he’d walked into the kitchen exhaust fan of a restaurant, and then blisters ripped across his skin, bubbling, searing, smoking. One gasp, and he exploded in a violent flash of light, flesh and bone disintegrating, stolen blood geysering into the air.  
“My God!” gasped the eldest of the men, and in response the younger man removed from his briefcase a sheaf of papers marked CONTRACT.  
  
With shaking hands, the three men in suits signed the contract, then exited the van, shooting disbelieving looks at the pool of steaming blood in the street. One by one they walked to their luxury cars parked further away, and drove off. The young man moved into the driver’s seat of the van, began to start the ignition.  
“Wait,” said the woman.  
  
Exiting the van, she walked to the vampire’s car, stepping fastidiously across the blood. Withdrawing chalk from her pocket, she drew on the wall next to the car two interlocking rings, one red, the other green. Pocketing the chalk, she ran back to the van, and together she and the bearded man drove away.  



	3. THE GALAXY CINEMA

Word had gotten out. Advertisements had been placed. The Vampire Lestat was coming to the midnight show at the Galaxy Cinema, un-live and in person. Tickets were sold out, and the crowd outside the theater, bathed in the rainbow lights of the Galaxy’s blinking neon marquee, was in a state of near pandemonium. A news van parked up front, in the loading zone.  
  
The limo arrived. The news crew switched on their massive lights and as a delirious scream swept the crowd there he was, adorable, waves of golden hair, rose-colored sunglasses. He smiled his deadliest smile, flashing fangs newly polished, and waved. The crowd went berserk, straining against the interlocked arms of the renta-cops.  
  
The news reporter, a cutie in a short skirt, came up to him, camera in tow.  
 “Lestat! Lestat! Remy Ramirez, _"Movies Tonight!"_ Wow, isn’t this amazing!”  
“Remy, enchanté!” Lestat replied, kissing her hand, ignoring the giant, fuzzy boom mike pointed at his crotch. “Yes, yes it is!”  
“Lestat, you’re famously difficult to interview,” Remy shouted over the crowd, “But you claim you actually _are_ a vampire?”  
“Oh, Remy,” Lestat chided. “Vampires aren't real. Everyone knows that. Excuse me.” And he swept regally into the theater, his publicist trailing behind.  
  
He climbed the stairs to the roped-off balcony, his heart beginning to beat in time to dark, pounding rock music that got louder with every step. Moving to the front railing, he looked down.  
  
Astounding. The ornate theater, built as a vaudeville house in 1910, made a cinema in the '20s, renamed in the space-age ‘60s, was now a lair of decaying elegance: threadbare velvet curtains, peeling gold-gilt wallpaper, chandeliers with missing lamps and dangling crystals, the perfect setting for the decadent rites being enacted below.  
  
Savage music. Barely-clad dancers on the stage spinning fire from their fingertips. Young mortals in ripped cerements running up and down the aisles, climbing over the seats, making out in the corners. Sex and death alike hovering in the air, teasing, ripe for the taking. A palpable, primordial energy, Dionysus loosed once more upon the world, and all because of him.  
“Oh...” he breathed, at a loss for any other words.  
His publicist puffed up behind him. “Any other ‘vampires,’ Lestat?” he asked.  
“They are as mortal as you, my friend,” Lestat replied. “And stage blood instead of real. How marvelous.” And then the house lights cut out and the music slammed into _Black Sabbat_ off the _Vampire Lestat_ soundtrack, and as the scream from the audience shook the walls, the stage was engulfed in light.  
  
In his movie, _Black Sabbat_ was sung by actors in decayed medieval dress. Here, the song was lip-synced by a bevy of comely young women in ripped underwear, upping the sex quotient, pleasing the audience who thronged the apron of the stage, and as the song moved into its driving, chanting chorus they all danced the _Black Sabbat_ dance. In the balcony, Lestat laughed like a delighted child.  
  
_Black Sabbat_ moved into its closing chords, and as it did another sound emerged, a raw, buzzing, rising chord of that got louder and louder, onrushing, undeniable.  
“What is this?” Lestat yelled to his publicist. “It’s not on my soundtrack!”  
“I don’t know!” the publicist yelled back. “Apparently it’s a thing they do here!”  
  
The chord crested and crashed over into the X cover of _Wild Thing,_ and then _she_ was there, a young woman with elfin features, impossibly sharp cheekbones and pointed chin, in a black corset, long black gloves and fishnet stockings, flame-orange hair tumbling wild over her shoulders as she and the frenzied audience lip-synced the words at each other:  
  
_Wild Thing! You make my heart sing!_  
_You make everything groovy_  
_C'mon, Wild Thing!_  
  
She skipped along the edge of the stage, just out of reach of the audience’s reaching hands.  
  
_Wild thing, I think I love you_  
  
A long, black glove came off.  
  
_But I wanna know for sure_  
  
The other one followed.  
  
_Come on and hold me tight_  
  
The corset unclasped.  
  
_You move me_  
  
And the corset was thrown into the wings, revealing a skimpy, sparkly black bikini. She danced along the stage edge, as behind her black-clad stage ninjas set up a chrome stripper's pole.  
  
_Wild Thing! You make my heart sing!_  
_You make everything groovy_  
_C'mon, C'mon, Wild Thing!_  
  
The music spun into a descending, dive-bombing chord, and she ran, leapt into the air, looped an elbow around the pole and reeled down, ending up on all fours. She crawled, catlike, to the stage edge, her eyes now shockingly locked onto Lestat's, singing directly to him.  
  
_Wild thing, I think I love you_  
  
At the edge of the stage she stood.  
  
_But I wanna know for sure_  
_Come on, hold me tight_  
  
And she ran a hand down her exposed throat, exhaling with Exene, openly inviting him, daring him, to ravish her:  
  
_You move me_  
  
The bridge kicked in and she spun away from the audience. Behind her, the ninjas brought onto the stage a galvanized tub that they hooked to a rope descending from the ceiling, and then rolled onto the stage a small refrigerator. At this, the front rows of the audience inexplicably began to cover themselves with large sheets of clear plastic.  
  
The ninjas opened the refrigerator. It was full of blood packs that they tossed from hand to hand in time with the music, slashing them open and draining the stage blood into the tub as the girl beat time nearby. The music climbed, rising, and now the tub was rising, hauled aloft on a pulley, and she’s taking her place below it and Lestat cannot believe what’s about to happen but there is no stopping it and as the music goes into its pounding, strobing crescendo the tub tips and the blood comes down and she’s bathed in it head to foot, and the grin splitting her face says she couldn’t, couldn’t be happier than she is at this  
exact moment. She and the audience scream together:  
  
_Wild Thing! You make my heart sing!_  
_You make everything groovy_  
_C'mon, Wild Thing!_  
_C'mon C'mon C'mon Wild Thing!_  
_Shake it shake it shake it shake it_  
  
And of course she _does,_ and blood flies everywhere, spattering the ecstatic crowd, and she is among them, their hands running through the stage blood running down her legs.  
  
The song goes into its final, unstoppable repetitions and then it’s winding down and fading out and she bows to the audience and they applaud her and she applauds them and then someone somewhere starts it, a rhythmic clapping, a steady cadence, and then everyone is doing it, hundreds of hands and it’s Lestat's intro song, the one his composer wrote for him to be a signature, and the music pours in, all sinuous, suggestive sex, and in the balcony Lestat himself stands as if he has no choice at all and places his foot upon the balcony railing. “Jesus, Lestat!” his agent cries.  
  
And he drops, twenty feet down into the aisle, landing lightly on his feet and the crowd goes absolutely insane as he parades unimpeded to the stage because they love him here and they respect him, so no one rushes him because that would be unseemly, and so he reaches the apron and the girl holds out a blood- streaked hand and he takes it and hops nimbly onto the stage.  
“Did you get that?” Remy Ramirez demanded of her camera crew.  
  
Lestat turned to his audience, lip-syncing his own voice:  
  
_When the moon is full_  
_And the blood is high_  
_And you're needing something new_  
_Just call my name_  
_It won't be the same_  
_And I will come to you_  
  
The crowd was beyond rapture. He grabbed one of the scantily-clad dancers. The girl nearly orgasmed right there, but she pulled it together to mock pull away, per the choreography of the movie, so he could spin her into a dip:  
  
_Your desire you're denying_  
_But we both know you're lying_ ,  
_I'm here and my appetite's undaunted_  
_So though you say no way_  
_You know I won't be swayed_  
_Just lie back, relax_  
_Because you know you want it._  
  
As one, the audience gleefully sang out the chorus, singing with him:  
  
_You know you want it!_  
_You know you want it!_  
_Stop pretending_  
_Feed your need and flaunt it!_  
_You know you want it!_  
  
A boy in the audience, perceiving the lack of a proper actor on the stage, ran up and into Lestat's arms for the tango part:  
  
_It's a sumptuous submission_  
_When you free your inhibition_  
_And if you need a nudge_  
_My skills are vaunted_  
_My lusciousness I'll lavish_  
_Your reluctance I will ravish_  
_Til you overflow c'mon!_  
_You know you want it!_  
  
With the boy on one arm and the girl on the other, they and the audience sang deliriously at one another:  
  
_You know you want it!_  
_You know you want it!_  
_Quit repressing that nasty itch_  
_Tantalize, tease and taunt it!_  
_You know you want it!_  
  
Lestat dropped arms with the mortals, moving downstage to address the audience:  
  
_I'm your favorite temptation_  
_The thrill you can't resist_  
_I am the consummation_  
_Devoutly to be wished_  
_Come to me I'll cure what ails ya_  
_Come to me I'll fulfill your dreams_  
_Come to me I will assail ya_  
_Come to me I'll make you scream!_  
  
Outside, unbeknownst to Lestat, a white van, with some kind of machinery on its top, pulled up in front of the theater. It was followed by a fleet of unmarked black vans.  
  
Inside, Lestat was surrounded by all the dancers, all the ninjas, the boy who'd run up onstage and they and the audience were singing the final chorus:  
  
_You know you want it_  
_You know you want it!_  
_Be the bloody specter at the feast_  
_It's your banquet you can haunt it_  
_You know you want it!_  
_You know you want it!_  
_You know you want it!_  
_You know you want it!_  
  
And then it was a bouncing ovation, five hundred people jumping up and down in mutual delirium. Lestat stood,soaking it in, choking back tears, not even really thinking _See, Louis. Your movie never did this._ Well, maybe a little.  
  
He gestured for quiet. The crowd hushed.  
“Oh,” he said,“I didn’t know what to expect when I came here tonight, except that… except that it was, you know, soothing to my ego…”  
That got a huge laugh.  
“But, oh…is this theater for sale? I want to buy this theater. I’ll get you new curtains, I’ll get you new chandeliers. I’ve never known such a feeling, I’ve never known such…” he searched for the right word, _“Acceptance._ Long live the Galaxy Theater,” he cried, “Long live this audience, long live _The Vam--”_  
But he never finished, because there was a huge, titanic, all-enveloping flash of light that blinded everyone in the theater. And in the shocked silence that followed, he looked at his arms, which were unmistakably, undeniably, smoking.  
  
At the sound of the running feet he looked up, beheld the body-armor-clad commandos swarming the balcony, machine guns and strange, wand-like apparatuses in their hands.  
“Mortals,” he whispered to himself. Mortals and their science. Mon Dieu.  
  
A bearded commando stepped forward into the aisle, backed by six more. “Step away from the dancers!” he cried.  
  
That brought Lestat back to himself. He stepped forward. “Harm not the audience,” he commanded. “Whatever your argument, it is with me.”  
The bearded man smiled, almost affably. “Then you had best come quietly, hadn't you?” he asked, and then held out a hand. “Come, Sir.”  
  
Glancing at Remy's camera crew, Lestat decided. In dead silence, he stepped onto the stairs leading off the stage.  
“Is this part of the show?” Remy whispered to her cameraman.  
“Is this part of the show?” whispered an audience member to his companion.  
“Is this part of the show?” whispered one dancer to another.  
  
Lestat was almost level with the bearded man when the soldier behind him raised his weapon, and on the stage, the flame-haired girl screamed.  
  
It was all he needed. He simultaneously struck the bearded man in the chest, knocking him back over several rows, and struck the gun so it discharged into the ceiling, stuttering bullets into the antique plaster. Mass pandemonium. Five hundred people took to their feet and fled for the exits. Lestat flowed through them, taking out commando knees as he could, punching helmets, trying desperately to avoid hurting his loyal fans. A soldier loomed in front of him. Enraged, Lestat swept over him, ripping open his throat before smashing through the glass lobby windows.  
  
A dark-haired medic rushed to the fallen soldier. “Easy!” he said. “Let me look!”  
The bearded man came up, rubbing his chest. “How bad?” he asked.  
“Not too,” replied the medic. “He only cut an external jugular.” He pressed his hands against the bleeding wound.  
The bearded man pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt. “He's getting nasty,” he said into it. “Take him.”   
Lestat, meanwhile, had made for his limo but three of the commandos popped up behind it, those strange wands in their hands. A burning ripped across Lestat's chest as if he had been struck by a whip. He spun, tensing for a leap into the air.  
  
A sudden blast of green, wavy light blocked him. Behind him, another. To each side, another. Looking up, he saw them converge into a four-sided pyramid of light, pinning him to the earth. He reached out a hand, and as his preternatural flesh neared the light, it sizzled.  
  
The bearded man called from beyond the wall of light. “We'll burn you!” he called. “Do you believe me?”   
Lestat snarled, at bay and not happy about it. Louis…  
  
“I'll take that for a yes,” the bearded man said conversationally. “And in that case, Cousin, I think this one belongs to you."  
  
The wall of green light in front of Lestat shimmered, molding itself around the unexpected form of a woman, a woman with her hair in a bun, an unflattering swoop of hair across her forehead. She wore a dark dress, spectacles, a lab coat, and a machine. She raised the wand.  
  
“Hello, movie star,” she said, and pulled the trigger.


	4. THE GUY MITCHELL AGENCY

Guy Mitchell squinted through the venetian blinds at the black-clad, spooky creatures across the street. Not vampires —it was broad, harsh, LA daylight-- but goths, distraught Lestat fans, Lestat fans who knew he was Lestat's agent, fans whom security had spent the morning removing from the lobby.  
  
His phone beeped, and his assistant's voice came through.  
“Remy Ramirez on one,” she said, and Guy, glancing nervously at Cynthia Carroll, punched the speaker button. Showtime.  
  
“Hey, Remy!” he schmoozed. “Howja like the show?”  
“What was that, Guy?” Remy's aggrieved voice tinnily replied. “What the fuck was that?”  
“Yeah, sorry 'bout that,” Guy replied. “We coulda told you, but be have this meta, one-foot-in-fiction- one-foot-out thing working, so we thought it would be better if you experienced it in real time. You know, like the chest-burster scene in _Alien?”_  
Remy's voice was acid. “So that was you setting up your sequel?” she said.  
“Cool, huh?” Guy replied.  
“Fuck you, Guy,” Remy snapped. “In case you’ve forgotten, we’re on the same side. You make the movies, we plug them on TV, you buy ads on the show, one big, happy circle jerk. You can dupe the public all you want, but if you want publicity for your sequel, hosing me at one A.M. isn’t the way to get it. I won’t be airing this. You want air time, you pay for it!” She hung up.  
  
Guy blew air out of his cheeks, ran a hand through his surgically-enhanced hair. “Well, she's pissed,” he said. “Better pissed than digging,” Cynthia replied. “She got her master's at Columbia.”  
“Speaking of digging, any luck with the vans?” Guy asked.  
“No,” Cynthia replied. “The plates are registered to a shell company that’s owned by a shell company that’s incorporated in the Cayman Islands.”  
“Someone really doesn’t want us to know who they are,” Guy said, rubbing his unshaved face. “Jesus, Cyn. What’s going on?”  
Cynthia looked through the blinds at the fans, braving the SoCal heat in their black. “I don’t know, Guy,” she said. “I just don’t know.”

Across town, at the _Movies Tonight_ offices on Bundy, Remy Ramierez looked at the raw footage from the previous night, at Lestat's inert body being loaded into a metal casket with a fork lift, then scrolling back to watch his 20-foot drop from the balcony over and over.


	5. CG & P

Lestat opened his eyes, blinking against the bright, white light. He was lying on his back on the floor of a large, sterile room, high ceilinged, white walls and white floor. Green light humming faintly between the double panes of reinforced windows. He was wearing the clothes he’d worn at the theater. His forearms and chest still hurt, the burns smarting.  
  
Rolling over, he saw the legs of a white plastic chair, the legs of a white plastic table, a cheap cloth bag of the sort given away at grocery stores, and a woman’s feet encased in ugly, practical shoes.  
  
“Good morning,” said Dr. Eleanor Warner. “Or rather, good evening. It is now 5:06 P.M. on November nineteenth, and you have been unconscious for fourteen hours and twenty-two minutes.”  
  
Lestat raised himself onto an elbow. “You shot at me,” he said.  
“I shot over your shoulder,” Eleanor replied. “While you were distracted by me, one of the men shot you from behind with a tranquilizer dart loaded with,” she consulted a paper on a clipboard, “24.82 cc’s of pharmaceutical- grade heroin.”  
Lestat was silent, processing that, and almost instinctively began taking inventory of the woman before him. Late twenties, early thirties. Straight bones, clear skin, adequate body weight. Teeth straight, possible orthodontia. No visible plastic surgery, but then, given her short, unmanicured nails, lack of cosmetics and hideous shoes, aesthetics were obviously not a priority to this one. Clunky eyeglasses. Mousy hair pulled back into a tight bun behind and looped in that unflattering swoop in front. Faint, unplaceable accent. Respiration accelerated, heartbeat ditto.  
‘She’s excited,’ Lestat thought to himself, ‘But _not afraid…’_  
  
“Oh,” Eleanor continued, “Do you see the boxes on the walls?”  
Looking up, Lestat did indeed see the boxes on the wall, looking much like audio speakers, bland and innocuous.  
“Those boxes are capable of emitting the same radiation as that which burned you last night. If you make any move toward me or to escape, they will burn you where you stand. Any attempt to tamper with them or to hack their control codes will be taken by the system as an attack and they will fire automatically. Do you understand?”  
Lestat said nothing, silently contemplating strangling her with the handles of her grocery bag, boxes or no boxes.  
“Oh, and,” she continued. “In case you were thinking of reading my mind…” she raised her hand to her forehead, lifting the flap of hair covering her temple and exposing the pink weal of a recently stitched wound, “It won’t work. I have an implant in my brain preventing it.”  
  
Enough of this. Lestat rose to his feet, towering over her, angrily dusting himself off.  
“Look,” he barked. “I don’t know who you are or what you think you know, but I am a U.S. citizen, and I am _very_ well connected! I want a telephone, now. I want my lawyer. I want the police! I want--”  
  
Sighing, Eleanor reached into the pocket of her lab coat, removed a small diabetes-testing lancet. Twisting off its plastic cap, she jabbed the exposed point into the pad of her left index finger, and held out the resulting drop of blood.  
  
Lestat stopped mid-rant. Unfed for a day, the smell of the blood pierced him, hunger instantly rising.  
“Well?” said Eleanor. “What is it?”  
“It’s…blood,” Lestat replied, struggling to sound as if it made no difference to him.  
“What color is it?”  
Lestat stared at her. What? “It’s red,” he replied, as if speaking to a very slow child.  
“Why?”  
Why was blood red? He didn’t know, he’d never thought about it. Blood was blood.  
  
“Because of, because of, um, the hemoglobin.” Who knows where he’d picked that up, but there it was.  
“Yes, the hemoglobin.” Eleanor smiled, as she bandaged her finger. “Which, as the compound word implies, is made up of two basic parts. Globular proteins, globin… and flat, circular arrangements of nitrogen, carbon and hydrocarbons called a porphyrin ring.”  
  
Pulling a remote control from her pocket, she touched a button and a slide appeared on a white wall, a diagram of letters in a circular shape, connected by single and double lines. In its center, a smaller circle, colored red, was labeled “Fe.”  
  
“This is a diagram of the porphyrin ring found in the hemoglobin of red-blooded animals,” Eleanor said. “The central atom, in red there, is an atom of iron. It is these iron atoms that give blood its red color and, as you could no doubt tell us, its distinctive, metallic tang. And the interesting this about that,” she said, “Is that you only find these porphyrin rings two places in nature. This is one of them, in hemoglobin. Here is the other one.” A touch of the remote, and an almost identical slide appeared, identical save that the central circle was now green, and labeled “Mg.”  
  
“This is the other porphyrin ring found in nature,” Eleanor reiterated. “This…is chlorophyll. Tell me, Mr. de Lioncourt: what is chlorophyll?”  
“It’s stuff in plants,” Lestat answered, momentarily baffled.  
“What does it do there?”  
“I don’t know,” he replied, beginning to lose his patience, “it photosynthesizes!”  
“Yes.” Eleanor smiled again. “It photosynthesizes. Or, in other words, it reacts to the light of the sun. Can you think of anything else that reacts to the light of the sun?”  
  
In the silence that followed, she touched her remote again, and the wall was filled with images from _The Vampire Lestat,_ images of actors dressed as vampires crawling out of graves, taking victims, burning in the sun.  
  
“You made a movie,” Eleanor said, “and you starred in it yourself, saying on the one hand that you really are a vampire but on the other carefully preserving the option of deniability, that no, you’re just an actor playing a vampire. But it is all real, isn’t it? Everything depicted in _The Vampire Lestat_ actually happened, at one point or another in history, didn’t it?”  
Lestat remained silent, the voice of his lawyer, Cynthia, in his head, hissing “Zip it!”  
  
Another touch of the remote and the image on the wall zoomed in on a vampire burning outside a concert hall, his body exploding in a brilliant flash of light.  
  
“And out of all the images in your movie, the one that most interests me is this one. Because not only do you burn, you burn with a blinding flash.”  
  
She turned back to Lestat. ‘The central atom in hemoglobin is iron,” she said. “The central atom in chlorophyll is magnesium. Ever see magnesium burn?”  
“Magnesium flash bulbs,” Lestat breathed, memories rising.  
“Yes,” said Eleanor. “Very good. Magnesium burns, Lestat, and it burns with a bright, white flash.”  
  
She returned to her chair, and gestured for him to do the same. Twisting around, Lestat sees a plastic chair behind him. He sat.  
  
“That,” Eleanor says, “is enough for the formulation of a hypothesis, enough to desire a sample of vampiric blood to run though a mass spectrometer. But wanting a vampire’s blood and getting it are two different things. Fortunately for us, there exists in the world a vampire who was egotistical enough to make a movie about his own life. Your film is playing at over twelve hundred cinemas even as we speak, but if you wanted the midnight show, you had to go to the Galaxy. The model of midnight audience-participation films already existed: we provided the venue and funding. Your vanity did the rest.”  
“It was a trap,” Lestat said.  
“Yes.”  
“Was it _all_ fake?” Lestat said, and at first Eleanor frowned, but then her brow cleared.  
“Ah,” she said. “I see your concern. We provided the venue and the funding, but the rest of the show was up to your fans. So yes, Mr. de Lioncourt, to the best of my knowledge, the _adoration_ was genuine.”  
For just a moment, Lestat closed his eyes, relief flooding through him, and in that moment stifled glee flitted across Eleanor Warner’s face.  
  
“Well,” she said, her severity returning, “There’s no accounting for taste. Back to business. Tell me, Lestat, given what you’ve heard here today, given the similarity of the two porphyrin rings, given the flammability and brightness of magnesium, given the propensity of your kind to combust with a blinding flash, given all that, if I were to run a sample of your blood through a mass spectrometer looking for magnesium, do you think I might find it?”  
  
Answering carefully, Lestat said, “If all that were true, then yes, perhaps.”  
“Okay then. Supposing, for the sake of argument, that I do exactly that, and do find magnesium in your blood, magnesium, furthermore, still bound in the porphyrin ring structure, reacting in you just the way it reacts in plants. Let’s say I find that. The question then becomes, where did it come from?”  
“What?”  
“Where did it come from? At one point you were human, and human blood contains no magnesium. Then you underwent a vampiric transformation, and from that moment on have consumed nothing but human or animal blood…which contains no magnesium. I do a blood draw, and find enough magnesium to make you, under certain provocation, go up like a roman candle.”  
  
She touched the remote, and the Vampire Lestat images are replaced by the porphyrin ring structures, side by side, iron and magnesium, red and green.  
“In other words, if you start with these,” indicating the red rings, “and end up with these,” indicating the green, “then where did they come from?”  
“My,” Lestat began, then started again, “The vampire’s body, must be making it.”  
  
There was a long moment while Eleanor waited to see if the shoe would drop, and when it did not she once more touched the remote. The rings were replaced with a periodic table, iron colored red, magnesium colored green. “If that is true,” she said. “Then the vampire’s body is converting atoms with twenty-six protons into atoms with twelve protons. It is splitting atomic nuclei. Lestat? _That’s nuclear fission_.”  
  
Reaching into the grocery bag, she withdrew a small black box equipped with a gauge and a metal stylus. Switching it on, she placed it on the floor and pushed it toward him with her shoe, and the Geiger Counter erupted, clicking and clicking and clicking.  
  
“You’re radioactive, Sweetheart,” Eleanor Warner says, “So no more pretending you’re just an actor. You're radioactive, and radioactive objects may be tracked, from a safe distance. They may be tracked by helicopters and airplanes. One of your traditional strengths has always been the ability to disappear? You no longer possess that. And once your radiation signature --a signature as unique to each vampire as a fingerprint, by the way-- was uploaded to the Global Positioning Satellites, which it was last night, there is no longer anywhere on Earth you can hide.” She touched the remote, the exploding vampire returned. Rising, she stepped into the beam, the ghastly image projecting onto her face.  
  
“All nuclear reactions occur at a given rate,” she said. “In nuclear power plants, the rate is regulated by control rods which absorb excess energy. Remove the regulation, or apply extra energy, as we did, to you, last night, in the form of X-ray radiation…”  
She glanced over her shoulder, shrugged.  
“And just so you know, the radiation that burned you wasn’t the green stuff. The green stuff is visible light. X-rays are invisible. The green light was just there so you’d know where to stop. Oh, and all electro-magnetic radiation, regardless of frequency, travels at the same speed: one hundred, eighty-six thousand, two hundred and eighty-one miles per second. You’re fast, vampire… are you faster than light?”  
  
Lestat said nothing, because he did not have to. Because, really, hadn’t he known for decades this was coming? As the sixteenth century had become the seventeenth, and the eighteenth, and the nineteenth, and, Jesus, the twentieth with its wars and its advances and its man on the freaking moon, for crying out loud, hadn’t he always known this night was coming? How many times had he wondered, in passing, about whatever diabolical engine it was that drove his existence?  
  
_“The Fire Inside,”_ he whispered, naming one of the songs in his movie.  
“Yes,” Eleanor smiled thinly. “That title was rather prophetic.” She clicked off the slides and silenced the Geiger Counter. Resuming her seat, she smoothed her lab coat.  
“Now,” she said, “for the bad news.”  
“The _bad_ news?” Lestat gasped.  
“In your film, you advanced the idea that no mortal scientist would risk his or her reputation on the study of vampires lest they be, what was your phrase, "branded a looney." I'm afraid you neglected to factor in the motivation of _profit._ Where do you think you are?”  
“No.” Lestat said, the horrid certainty finally crossing his mind. “Oh, no.”  
“You are in a high-security cell in a research and development facility owned by the Consolidated Gas and Power Corporation, the largest private-sector provider of nuclear energy in the world. And they, um, own you.”  
_“What?_ ” Lestat yelled, all the shock and stress of the last hours colliding headfirst with the centuries of having his own way inside him. “They _what?!_ ”  
Eleanor, suddenly shaken, rose from her chair, started backing towards the door.  
“I understand the procedures aren’t that painful…” she stammered.  
_“You filthy little harpy!”_ Lestat cried, losing his temper and flowing toward her.  
  
A split second later and he was crumpled on the floor in excruciating pain, his body burnt, his clothes smoking. Eleanor, meanwhile, released her held breath, her fingertips tingling, an involuntary acknowledgment of how close to death she’d just come. She took a moment, collected herself, then stepped over to Lestat.  
“That was a warning, vampire,” she said, her voice a little shaky, but then added the one thing she knew would most impact The Vampire Lestat:  
  
“The next time, it will be your face.”  
  
Gathering her belongings, she exited the room, the heavy door booming shut behind her.


	6. INTRODUCING BRIAN

Dr. Eleanor Warner and her bearded cousin, Courtland Warner, attorney at law, sat across from Deke Hollingsworth, CEO of Consolidated Gas and Power, in an executive boardroom in CG&P’s Los Angeles regional headquarters. Deke’s best friend and COO, Charles (Chuck) Mahoney was also present, as were various CG&P suits, and a sandy-haired man, with the slightly seedy look of a graduate student, who sat at Eleanor’s right. A television/VCR sat on a rolling cart monitor at the top of the table.  
“Right,” said Chuck Mahoney. Let’s get this briefing underway. Dr. Warner?”  
  
“First,” Eleanor said, “I’d like to introduce Dr. Brian Larchman, my new assistant. He recently obtained his doctorate from Johns Hopkins, where his research focused on mitochondrial function. His dissertation was upon ATP formation. He also,” she smiled, “once took an undergraduate course in cryptozoology.”  
“Hello,” Brian waved, while a chuckle rolled through the room.  
  
“Having overcome his initial skepticism regarding our control specimen,” Eleanor continued, “Brian is now ready to join us in our queries. Speaking of which, our preliminary experiments have yielded very promising results. Mass spectroscopy of blood samples obtained from the specimen show a pronounced magnesium spike, and chemical analysis has shown that magnesium to indeed be bound in a porphyrin ring structure. Subsidiary experiments, into tissue regeneration and pain thresholds, continue.”  
  
Next to her, Brian looked at the floor, a faint flush suffusing his cheeks.  
  
“Our work now focuses on understanding the mechanism by which his body processes energy and in harnessing that energy,” Eleanor concluded. “Any questions?”  
One of the suits spoke up. “I still can’t get my mind around it. Cellular fission? How is it possible?”  
Eleanor smiled. “Brian?”  
  
“Well, it’s a question of scale,” Brian said. “Our own cells produce more energy than we can handle, did you know that? But we have a mechanism to deal with it, the electron transport system. Of course, we make energy by ripping the electrons off the outside of atoms, while he, apparently, makes it by ripping the atoms themselves apart.”  
“Just how much energy are we talking about, Mr. Larchman?” asked another suit.  
“More than enough to keep a ‘dead’ body up and walking long past a normal lifetime,” Eleanor enumerated. “To move with supra-human speed, to account for all the tricks his kind are famous for performing. And to accelerate healing, as our preliminary work has shown.”  
  
Rising, she inserted a VHS tape into the TV port and pushed PLAY… and Brian and the executives all flinched as Lestat's angry cries came from the TV monitor.  
“Note that no matter what implement was used,” Eleanor said, “Scalpel, bone saw, propane torch, the healing was almost instantaneous.”  
  
Ejecting the tape and placing it into her shoulder bag, she faced the men.  
  
“Unfortunately, due to the invasive and, well, potentially destructive nature of these experiments,” she said, “We have decided that possession of a second specimen is advisable. Therefore, another collection is scheduled for tonight. Are there any other questions? No? In that case, gentlemen, I suggest we get back to work. There is much to be done.”  
  
Eleanor picked up her bag and everyone rose, the executives returning to their offices, the scientists and Courtland heading back down to the labs.  
“I’ll ready the team,” Courtland said, and turned down a side hall, leaving Eleanor alone with Brian. A few seconds passed. Brian coughed.  
“You know, Eleanor,” he began. “Are the pain experiments really necessary?”  
“Why, of course they are, Brian,” Eleanor replied. “We may learn something that will help humanity.”  
“It’s just,” Brian said, clearly reluctant, “It’s just that you so seem to enjoy them…”  
Eleanor stopped, appraised him.  
“Are we not paying you enough, Brian?” she asked coolly.  
“No, Eleanor,” Brian replied, the flush back on his cheeks. “The money is more than adequate.”  
“Good,” Eleanor said, continuing down the hall. “I wouldn’t want you to be unhappy.”  
A few seconds later, Brian tried changing the subject. “You know,” he said, “I can’t help wondering, how did you get into this? How did you go from the porphyrin rings in a textbook, to--”  
“Oh, that reminds me,” Eleanor said. “I got you something.” She pulled a book out of her bag and handed it to him. “It’s a popular history of radiation,” she said. “It’s not a scientific text by any means, but I found it enjoyable. Did you know that as late as 1953 you could buy an over-the-counter contraceptive jelly laced with radium? Ah, here we are.”  
  
They had come to the door to Lestat’s cell. “Now I warn you, Brian.” Eleanor said. “You’ve seen video of this individual and you’ve seen the lab reports, but they cannot prepare you to meet him in person. Always remember, he’s a killer, and like most sociopaths he’s charming, manipulative, and narcissistically self-confident. Were it not for the intimate nature of your work with him, I wouldn’t allow you to have access to him at all. Understand?”  
“Yes,” Brian replied. “I see.”  
  
She unlocked the door and they entered a small anteroom on the other side of the lasered windows. The lights in the cell were on, but Lestat himself could not be seen. Eleanor punched the button on an intercom.  
“Mr. de Lioncourt?” she asked.  
  
Lestat’s face lurched into view right in front of them, his expression ghastly, as if he were a walking corpse.  
Brian jumped, startled. Eleanor frowned.  
  
“Stop that,” she scolded, as if talking to a naughty puppy. “I’ve brought someone to meet you.”  
Lestat looked at Brian, and his eyes locked, boring into Brian’s.  
“This is Brian Larchman,” Eleanor began brightly, “My new assistant, he’s--”  
She noticed Lestat’s raptness, and rapped sharply on the glass in front of his nose, making him blink, earning herself a look of unmitigated hatred.  
“You. Behave yourself!”  
Lestat backed off, making an exaggerated ‘moi?’ gesture.  
Brian shook himself, as if waking. “Hello,” he said through the intercom.  
“Hi there,” Lestat replied. “So, what’s your interest in all this?”  
“Brian is a physiologist,” Eleanor replied. “He’s here to help us understand how your mitochondria make energy.”  
“How nice. You wouldn’t happen to have a phone, would you, Brian?”  
“Well, no, I…” Brian began, and then his eyes went blank and his mouth went slack as Lestat’s gaze returned to him.  
“Brian!” Eleanor yelled, and grabbing the lapels of Brian’s one good jacket, she shook him as hard as she could.  
Behind her, Lestat smiled.  
“Who?” Brian said, foggy. What…what happened?”  
“It was a mistake to bring you in here!” Eleanor said. “You’re not ready. Get out!”  
“But, I…” Brian protested.  
“Now, Brian!” And he left, still slightly dazed. Eleanor kept her face toward the closed outer door, frowning.  
  
“That went rather well, I thought,” said Lestat.  
Eleanor’s expression changed, the frown vanishing, replaced by a cheery grin. She pivoted.  
  
“Nice try,” she said to Lestat.  
“Thanks,” he replied, eyeing her warily. “What’s wrong with you?”  
“Oh, nothing. Why do you want a phone?”  
“So I can call my lawyer, why do you think? People will be looking for me, you know. You can’t just keep me locked up forever, with nothing to do or to read, for you to experiment on whenever you want.”  
“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought that’s what we were doing. Your physiology is very interesting, you know.”  
“That’s right, you want to know all about what makes me tick, don’t you. Hence Brian, the cute physiologist.”  
He stopped, considering her. “You know, Eleanor, I’ve been thinking about you. What would make a frigid woman like you choose vampires as her life’s work? Disappointed in love, Eleanor? Taking all that rage and frustration and projecting them onto me… because I embody everything you don’t have? Excitement… passion… consummation?” His voice dropped, becoming a seductive purr. “Don’t you know there’s another way? Wouldn’t your work be easier if you and I worked together? And oh, I promise you, it would be so much more pleasurable--” and then he broke off, because Eleanor had burst out laughing.  
“Sorry,” Eleanor said, wiping away tears. “I was wondering when you’d get around to that. Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy it, you being all sexy and all. It was quite the performance. But sorry, Cupcake. There is nothing we want from you we cannot take by force. Besides,” she continued, looking up at him, a head and a half taller than she, and said, with utter honesty, “You’re not my type.”  
  
The stood a moment longer, Lestat glowering, Eleanor rocking on the balls of her feet.  
  
“Well,” Eleanor said finally. “That was fun. I have to go now.”  
Turning, she unlocked the outer door. Then she looked back, over her shoulder, and damned if she didn’t actually _wink:_  
  
“Let me know if you have any questions.”  
  
The door shut, leaving Lestat staring at blank steel.


	7. SETBACK

The van and its crew had assembled in a downtown alley on the outskirts of skid row. Courtland Warner cast a disapproving eye on the alcoholics and drug addicts drifting past the alley’s mouth.  
“This is a freaking goose chase,” he complained.  
  
“The L.A. coroner’s office reports two deaths due at least in part to exsanguination in these alleys in the past six months,” Eleanor replied, settling her bag more comfortably on her shoulder. “That young one we destroyed favored the waterfront and this isn’t exactly Lestat’s cup of tea. I’d say these deaths were the work of a third.”  
“I hope you’re right, Ella,” her cousin shot back. “Because this is costing us twenty grand a night.” Still grumbling, he turned away to set up the equipment.  
  
Behind him, a sound at the bottom of the alley caught Eleanor’s ear. A scuffle? On her own, she stepped toward the sound. One step. A dozen. The sound was coming from the far side of a trash-filled dumpster. She stepped closer. A body exploded from the side of the dumpster, a skinny vagrant in filthy rags, with wild eyes and snarled black hair. He collided with Eleanor, knocking her down and grabbing her shoulder bag.  
  
She fought to hang onto it, but couldn’t. He ripped it away and was gone, down and out of the alley. Eleanor screamed.  
Courtland and the men came running up. “He got my bag!” Eleanor cried, cradling her skinned knee. And to their blank looks she screamed “It has the tape in it!”  
  
“Shit!” Courtland said. He took off after the vagrant, followed by the others, who moved more slowly, encumbered by their half-donned equipment. He rounded the corner, and Eleanor limped after him, nursing her knee. At the corner, her cousin was nowhere in sight.  
  
“Courtland?”  
  
He emerged from the mouth of another alley, his fist wrapped around a bleeding wrist.  
  
“Son of a bitch cut me!” he said.  
“Did you get the tape?”  
“No.”  
“We have to find it!” Eleanor cried, panic rising.  
“Okay, okay,” Courtland replied, fishing a first aid kit out of the van. “Suits off, guys. Change of plans. Split up. We’re looking for a tan leather shoulder bag. Check every dumpster, every doorway, under every car.”  
  
The men shed their backpacks and wands and moved off. “It’s okay,” Courtland said to Eleanor. “He’s probably just after cash to buy drugs, and will dump the purse as soon as he can. The tape will mean nothing to him. We’ll get it back.”  
“Yes, but if we don’t,” Eleanor said, fear coming into her eyes, “What am I going to tell Deke Hollingsworth?”

Eleanor, her eyes red-rimmed and tired, stood before Deke Hollingsworth in the CG&P executive boardroom, Courtland slightly behind her. Deke was not happy.  
“And CG&P personnel were depicted on this tape,” he said, tight-lipped.  
“Yes,” Eleanor replied.  
“Wearing CG&P uniforms,” Deke continued.  
“Yes,” Eleanor replied.  
“The guy probably just wanted cash for drugs, and threw the purse into the nearest sewer,” Courtland offered.  
“Well by God he better have!” Deke exploded, all six feet two of his former college-football-star body trembling with rage. “Because if this gets out I swear to you, heads will roll!” With an effort, he got himself under control. “Now I have a meeting to attend and you’ve made me late. In future,” he growled, “all CG&P property is to remain on CG&P grounds. Is that clear, Dr. Warner?”  
“Yes, Mr. Hollingsworth,” Eleanor replied, miserable.  
“Good!” Deke left the boardroom, slamming the door behind him.

Meanwhile, across town, a pair of double-gloved hands placed the VHS tape from Eleanor’s purse into a stolen Magna  
Pictures envelope, sealed it, and affixed a label addressing the delivery to Remy Ramierez, _Movies Tonight,_ at Fox Television.


	8. REMY

Remy sighed, running the footage of the Clarke brothers across her screen again. Offspring of a successful restaurant-chain family, trust-fund kids with no need to ever really work, the teen-aged twins seemed to spend all their time getting kicked out of nightclubs and driving drunk. But they were young, thin and rich, so America couldn’t get enough of them. ‘Talentless train wrecks,’ Remy thought, but no, that wasn’t right. Being train wrecks _was_ their talent.  
  
She sighed again, popping the tape out of her TV/VCR and tossing it on her desk. Graduate of Columbia School of Journalism. The first of her family to attend college, scrounging through on scholarships, part-time jobs, legal amphetamines and grit. And this was her job: reporting on the antics of brats.  
  
The mail kid dropped her mail onto her desk and the Magna envelope caught her eye. She opened it, and absent-mindedly stuck the VHS tape into the VCR. Then she blinked, lunging for the volume control as Lestat's screams filled the room.  
  
“Hey, isn't that the Vampire Lestat?”the mail kid asked.  
“Yeah,” Remy replied, not taking her eyes from the screen.  
“Is this from his movie?”  
“No,” Remy replied. “I just saw it on Saturday, and there’s nothing like this in it.”  
“What’s that on their uniforms?” the kid asked, squinting at the screen. “C…G…and P. The gas company?  
Why would the gas company be torturing the vampire Lestat?”  
  
Remy didn’t answer. The back of her neck was tingling. Sweat had broken out in her armpits. All her reporter’s instincts, long dulled by a steady diet of tabloid crap, suddenly revived. _The_ _Vampire Lestat_ had been number one at the box office for the past three weeks straight, and that in the crowded autumn market. This might be a hoax, it might be a joke, but every fiber of her being was telling her it was a lead. A real story. “Good question,” she said, and reached for her phone.  
  
Guy Mitchel punched the button on his phone. Remy Ramirez, again? Calling to apologize? “You got Guy,” he growled, his trademark greeting.  
  
“Hi, Guy,” Remy was all sweetness. “Hey, you know that _TVL_ sequel you're setting up? I just wanted to thank you for sending me the torture scene.”  
Guy blinked. “Torture scene?”  
“You know,” Remy cooed. “The one where CG &P tortures Lestat? How’d you get then to agree to that, by the way? It doesn’t seem like very positive product placement for them.”  
  
Guy's brain seemed to have stopped working. “CG&P?” he said dumbly. “The Gas Company?”  
“Yeah, and you know the weird thing?” Remy continued, “I called CG&P for a sound bite, and they don’t seem to know anything about it. I also called Magna, who supposedly sent me the footage, and they don’t know anything about it either! Isn’t that weird?”  
“Uh,” Guy said, his fingers reaching for the drawer at the back of which lay the pack of cigarettes he wasn't supposed to have.  
“Well anyway,” Remy went on, infuriatingly cheerful, “I just wanted to say this footage is so compelling that I’ve changed my mind about promoting your sequel, and we’ll be airing it on the show tonight. And hey, if you’ve got any more sneak peeks, 'Fox First!'”  
  
She rang off. Guy ripped open his office door, crushing the cigarettes in the process.   
“Get me Cynthia Carrol!” he yelled.  
  
  
Eleanor and Courtland Warner stood before a livid Deke Hollingsworth and a grim-faced Chuck Mahoney in the CG&P executive board-room. On the wall, Remy Ramierez’s face filled a TV screen. “What you are about to see is graphic,” Remy was saying. “Viewer discretion is advised.” And Lestat's outraged screams once more sounded forth. Across Los Angeles, others also watched their TV screens. In a Century City high-rise, Guy and Cynthia watched. At Movies Tonight, Remy's producer watched, as did the News team on the next floor. Out in Burbank, executives at Magna Pictures watched. Downtown, the L.A. District Attorney watched. And in their homes and in their bars, Lestat’s fans watched. Many, many people watched Lestat de Lioncourt be tortured on TV, but not Lestat, who was in his cell, being subjected to a TV he couldn’t control perpetually tuned to _Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies._  
  
The screaming ceased. Remy’s face came back. “Is it real, or is it a hoax?" she said. "Would a respected Fortune 500 company really kidnap and torture a movie star? Only Lestat can say, and he cannot be found. The burning question tonight: where is The Vampire Lestat?”  
  
Deke Hollingsworth went apoplectic. “I cannot believe your incompetence has so damaged this company!” he screamed at Eleanor. “How could you be so careless, so stupid?! If we suffer material damages I swear not only will I shitcan you but you will be held personally liable for our losses!”  
  
“Perhaps it’s not as bad as it seems,” said Courtland.  
  
“This company has just been exposed to charges of kidnapping, false imprisonment, assault and God knows what else!” Deke yelled, “How is it not as bad as it seems?!”  
  
Courtland answered quietly. “CG &P cannot be accused of kidnapping, nor false imprisonment, nor assault,” he said, “Because kidnapping, false imprisonment and assault only apply to _people.”_  
  
A long silence filled the boardroom. “This is a publicly-traded company, is it not?” Courtland continued. “You were planning to someday go public with the provenance of these new technologies, weren’t you? CG &P will not appear to be in the wrong because CG&P is not _in_ the wrong. Lestat de Lioncourt is not a human being. He is a vampire, a dangerous monster we have removed from the streets for the betterment of mankind.” He brought his hands up to his chin, tenting his fingers. “Society must be protected,” he said.  
  
“It’ll mean court…” Hollingsworth said.  
  
“It was going there anyway,” Courtland replied. “Besides, Deke,” he added gently, “What other choice do we have?”  
Hollingsworth shook his head. “I hope to Christ you’re right,” he said.  
“I’m a lawyer,” Courtland replied. “I know the law. Call a press conference, tonight. The best defense is a good offense… we cannot appear hesitant or apologetic. We cannot appear _guilty._ And I’ll talk to Legal.” Deeper in the building, telephones began to ring. Hollingsworth waited one beat, then nodded curtly, dismissing them. Eleanor and Courtland stepped out into the hall.  
  
“Are you all right?” Courtland asked his cousin.  
“Don’t worry about me,” she replied, opening her handbag and checking on her gun.  
  
  
Lestat sat at the plastic table in his cell, staring at the two interlocking rings he’d drawn on the table-top in his own blood. Suddenly, the outer door open, and Eleanor Warner entered. Pointing to the deadly radiation- emitting boxes in the upper corners, she unlocked the inner door and stepped inside his cell, closing the door behind her.  
  
“Now what?” Lestat asked, and in reply Eleanor pulled out a walkie-talkie.  
“Okay,” she said, and then a whole crowd of people poured into the antechamber: Remy and her camera crew, other reporters and their crews, CG &P lawyers, CG&P security officers, Chuck Mahoney and sweet Mary and Joseph, Guy Mitchell and Cynthia Carroll!  
“Guy!” Lestat exclaimed. “Cynthia!”  
  
He rushed to the reinforced window, but recoiled from the invisible radiation buzzing between the panes.  
  
Cynthia pounced on Eleanor. “I demand you release him!” she ordered.  
“I’m sorry,” Eleanor replied. “I can’t do that.”  
“What do you mean, you can’t do that?” Guy demanded. “He’s a movie star!”  
“No, he’s a trade secret,” Eleanor replied.  
“You release him right now!” said Cynthia.  
“Get a court order,” said Eleanor.  
“He is my client!” said Cynthia.  
“Be that as it may, he is also a vampire,” said Eleanor.  
“Are you _insane?”_ said Cynthia.  
“If I were insane, could I do this?” said Eleanor, and whipping out her gun, she shot Lestat point-blank in the face.  
Blood, bone and pulverized tongue splashed against the window in front of the horrified onlookers. They gasped.  
_“Oh, vu vucking bith!”_ said Lestat… and before the eyes of the onlookers and the rolling cameras, his face healed.  
“Lestat…!” Cynthia breathed.  
“Oh, like you didn’t know,” Eleanor said, and Cynthia clammed up, shutting her mouth with an audible _hup_.  
“What are you _doing?!”_ Lestat cried at Eleanor, his face completely restored.  
“Finishing what you started,” she replied calmly, replacing her gun in her handbag. “You wanted to be famous.”  
“Lestat! Lestat!” Remy yelled, “Do you have anything to say?” And that set them all off, the reporters baying for a quote and Cynthia yelling “Lestat, say nothing!” and the CG &P security guards bawling “All right folks, show’s over. Let’s all go back to the conference room. Nothing more to see here,” and herding them all out until it was Eleanor and Lestat alone once more.  
  
“What have you done?!” Lestat almost wailed.  
“You started it,” Eleanor replied. “Standing there, flapping your vampire arms around, going ‘look at me, look at me!’ Well, now they are. Happy?”  
“When I get out of here,” Lestat said, gritting his teeth, “I swear by all that is holy _I. Will. Kill. You.”_  
Eleanor rolled her eyes. “Anyone can kill me,” she said. “Let’s see you make me come.”  
Once more indicating the radiation boxes, she marched out of the cell, locked it behind her and opened the anteroom door. “Oh, Ms. Carroll!” she cried. “Mr. Mitchell! Tell me: what color is blood?”  
The door shut behind her, and Lestat was once more alone.  
  
Out in the CG &P parking lot, Cynthia and Guy sat slumped in the front seat of Cynthia’s Mercedes, both of them almost numb from what they’d just heard from Eleanor Warner. Guy’s cell phone rang, and wearily, he answered it. Even across the aether, the New York accent of Bruno Schultz, President of Magna Pictures, was unmistakable.  
“Guy?” he yelled. “What the hell is going on over there?”  
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you, Bruno,” Guy sighed.  
“Well, is it true? Are they holding him? And they won’t let him go?”  
“Yeah,” Guy said. ‘It’s true.”  
“Well, that’s a problem, Guy, because we have a twenty-million-dollar contract with that bloodsucking putz, pay or play!”  
“I know, Bruno,” Guy said, rubbing his temples. “I made the deal.”  
“Then it’s your job to fix it!” Bruno yelled. “You hear me? I don’t care how, but you fix it!” Bruno hung up, and Guy turned to Cynthia.  
“Bruno wants us to fix it,” he said.


	9. JUDGE DAVIS

Back in the CG&P lab, Eleanor slapped a temporary restraining order on the table in front of Brian.  
“Well, they got a restraining order,” she complained. “As of eight a.m. this morning, we are legally enjoined from performing any more experiments upon Lestat de Lioncourt, esquire. Well. We can wait it out, of course,but now I have to go to court to fight her attempt to get an injunction forcing us to release him us: waste of time!”  
  
“What shall I do in the meantime?” Brian asked.  
“Oh, the last of those glucose tests,” Eleanor replied, “Or the tidal volume readings.”  
“That won’t take very long,” Brian said. “I was hoping for new samples.”  
Gathering her things for court, Eleanor nodded toward the book on radiation she’d given him.  
“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” she said, and left.  
  
At the Los Angeles County Court, Judge Laverna Davis lowered Cynthia’s Petition for Injunction and surveyed her courtroom. On one side sat Cynthia Carroll, Guy Mitchell and lawyers from Magna Pictures; on the other Courtland and Eleanor Warner, and lawyers representing Consolidated Gas and Power. Behind them in the observer’s area sat the almost salivating press corps, including Remy and her crew.  
  
“Is this true?” Judge Davis asked Courtland. “Are you holding him against his will?"  
Courtland stood. “Yes, your Honor,” he said. “We are.”  
Judge Davis was astounded. “Why… why is this woman even standing in front of me?” she asked rhetorically. To Cynthia, she said, “Have you brought criminal charges?”  
“We filed this morning, your Honor,” Cynthia said, glaring at Courtland.  
“Well, Mr. Warner?” Judge Davis said. “Would you care to explain your client’s actions?”  
“Certainly, your Honor,” Courtland replied. “We are holding Lestat de Lioncourt against his will because his will is immaterial. Lestat de Lioncourt has no rights. Lestat de Lioncourt is not a human being.” The press corps gasped, and Judge Davis barked “Quiet!”  
Cynthia now stood. “Your Honor, this is absurd,” she said. “Of course he’s a human being. I have  
here his papers of U.S. citizenship, issued in 1984…”  
“Using whose birth certificate, Ms. Carroll?” Courtland asked.  
“Mr. Warner, you will address your remarks to me,” Judge Davis said, an edge to her voice.  
“I apologize, your Honor,” Courtland said. “But we stand by our assertion: Lestat de Lioncourt is not a human being. He is a vampire.”  
“Your Honor, this is ridiculous!” Cynthia cried.  
“I am inclined to agree with you, Ms. Carroll,” Judge Davis said. “Mr. Warner, only my stubborn refusal to believe that the entire CG&P organization has lost its collective mind is keeping me from citing you for contempt of court.”  
“I understand, your Honor,” Courtland said. “I was just as skeptical when I first learned the facts of the case. But with the court’s permission, I’d like to call as witness Dr. Eleanor Warner.”  
At a nod from Judge Warner, Eleanor rose, and walked to the witness’ chair.

Meanwhile, in the CG&P lab, Brian idly leafed through the book on radiation. A passage caught his eye, and he read with more interest… and then with intense interest. He skipped back a few pages, read avidly, then spun to face the large chart of the periodic table on the wall. “Oh, my,” he said.

In the courtroom, Eleanor sat in the witness’ chair. Courtland stood before her.  
“Eleanor,” he said. “You understand you are under oath, and any false statements expose you to the charge of perjury?”  
“Of course,” Eleanor replied.  
“You are currently employed by Consolidated Gas and Power?”  
“Yes.”  
“And you obtained your doctorate in biotechnology from Cal Tech, after which you did research on plant-derived ethanols at the H. West Institute for Alternative Fuel Development?”  
“Yes.”  
“And you now lead the research into the physiology of the creature known as Lestat de Lioncourt?”  
“Yes.”

In the lab, Brian held his cell phone to his ear. Eleanor’s voice played, saying, _You’ve reached Dr. Eleanor_ _Warner, please leave a message…_ Exasperated, he hung up, and then, squaring his shoulders as if reaching a momentous decision, left the lab.

“In your expert opinion,” Courtland said to Eleanor, “is CG&P justified in holding this creature against his will?”  
“Definitely,” Eleanor replied. “By his own admission, Lestat de Lioncourt is a bipedal, sanguinivorous humanoid, or, if you will, a vampire. He therefore, under the law, has no more rights than a lab rat.”  
“But, Doctor, what evidence do you have of this?”  
“Mr. de Lioncourt was apprehended using technology that exploited his vampiric physiology,” Eleanor said. “Were he not what he is, we could not have captured him. Experiments with various foodstuffs have shown that Mr. de Lioncourt is incapable of eating normally. And, of course, Mr. de Lioncourt heals inhumanly fast, as I believe the world recently saw.”  
“And you can back all this up with hard data?”  
“Yes… although to do so in open court would endanger valuable trade secrets,” Eleanor concluded. Courtland thanked her, and retired. Cynthia, eyes glinting, came forward.  
“Dr. Warner, tell me: have you ever personally witnessed Mr. de Lioncourt kill anyone?” she asked.  
“No,” Eleanor replied.  
“Ever see him assault anyone?”  
“No.”  
“Ever see him drink blood? Other than that you forced on him, that is.”  
“No.”  
“So you really have no evidence that he’s a “vampire” at all, do you?” Cynthia asked. For all you know he’s just a guy with unusual physiology, right?”  
Courtland interrupted. “Your Honor, we will be more than happy to supply Ms. Carroll with all the evidence she requires,” he said.  
“And just when will that be, Counselor? When you feel like it? Your Honor, I demand that they release him at once!”  
“Your Honor, we cannot proceed until you issue a gag order protecting CG&P trade secrets!” Courtland countered.  
“A man is in immediate danger!” Cynthia cried.  
“He’s not a man!” Courtland cried back.  
“Which you have not proved!” Cynthia snarled.  
“Well, we will!” Courtland snarled back.  
“May I say something?” Eleanor asked.  
“Oh, Dr. Warner,” said Judge Davis. “Yes, you may.”  
“Regardless of whatever else he may be,” Eleanor said, “Lestat de Lioncourt is a killer. In order to live he must kill, and his favorite victim is human. He has not been fed in six days. If you free him, your Honor, I assure you, someone will die tonight.”

At CG&P, Brian hesitated outside the door to the antechamber of Lestat’s cell, then unlocked the door and stepped inside.

“Right,” Judge Davis said. “I want to see this individual for myself.”

Lestat looked up, surprised to see Brian alone.  
“You’re breathing!” Brian said.

In the courtroom, Eleanor and Courtland exchanged a glance, then raised their eyebrows at Judge Davis as if to say, “you asked for it.”

In the hallway outside Lestat’s cell, Courtland handed Judge Davis a clipboard on which was fastenned a CG&P waiver. “Please sign,” he said, “Indicating you have been warned as to the true nature of the individual and the risks inherent in this visit and of your agreement to hold CG&P and all its affiliates harmless in the event you are injured, maimed or killed.” Eyeballing him hard, Judge Davis signed the waiver.  
  
Eleanor unlocked the door, stepped through…and stopped short, gasping. Brian and Lestat were face-to-face through the glass.  
“Brian, what are you doing here?” Eleanor cried.  
“Eleanor, I found something, in…”  
“Are you all right?!”  
“Yes, I’m fine. I--”  
“Do you recall any lost time?”  
“No, I’m fine, but I--”  
“Dr. Warner?” Judge Davis asked from the hall.  
“Later, Brian!” Eleanor snapped. “This way, your Honor,” she said to Judge Davis. Unlocking the inner door, she allowed Judge Davis to step through.  
  
“Oh, God,” Lestat said.  
“Mr. de Lioncourt?” Judge Davis said.  
“Witch!” Lestat spat at Eleanor.  
“Are you all right?” Judge Davis said to Lestat, taking a step toward him.  
“Stay away from me!” Lestat said desperately to Judge Davis… but she stepped even closer.  
“I’m here to help you, Mr. de Lioncourt,” she said.  
“No!” Lestat said, almost strangling on it, and turned his back on the approaching woman. Meaning well, Judge Davis reached out and touched his shoulder.  
“Mr. de Lioncourt?”  
Lestat’s hand clamped onto Judge Davis’ wrist. He turned, his eyes swimming, iridescent, hypnotic. Judge Davis gasped and tried to pull away, but he pulled her closer.  
“Ah, Laverna,” he said. “You’ve come to me at last.” His eyes gazed into hers, and she stopped struggling, her brow smoothing out, her expression softening. Lestat twined his hands in her hair.  
“Morris hasn’t ever really satisfied you, has he?” he murmured to her. “Oh, I know, you love him, you would never betray him, but he doesn’t know, does he? Not like I do. He doesn’t know how easy it is to give a woman pleasure when she wants it, when she’s already half way there…” He slipped his knee between her legs, and her head fell back. “When all it takes is a gentle nudge,” he said, and as Judge Davis moaned, he sank his fangs into the veins of her neck. The room dissolved into a red haze, swarming with a woman’s orgasmic moans.  
  
Judge Davis hit the ground, hard. Shocked, her eyes popped open. She was on the floor, her skirt pushed up. People were pounding on the connecting glass, and Lestat was across the room, crumpled up, his garments smoking.  
  
She rolled onto her hip, touched her hand to her smarting throat and gasped when it came away coated in blood.  
“Oh my God! Oh my God!” she said.  
  
The inner door unlocked, and Eleanor rushed to her side.  
  
“What is he?” Judge Davis shrieked. “What is he? My God, that thing belongs in quarantine!” She turned on Lestat, who still lay across the room. “How dare you! That was battery! I’m pressing charges!”  
Eleanor took her by the shoulders. “Your Honor, I agree, he belongs in containment,” she said. “But where is the facility as well-equipped as ours to hold him? Show it to me and I’ll move him tonight. But for right now, isn’t he better off where he is?”  
  
“Yes… yes… let him stay.” Judge Davis said, and humiliation flooded her as the memory of what she’d just felt, what she’d just _done_ before all these people hit her. She rounded on Cynthia. “And you!” she spat.

Everyone else had left the antechamber outside Lestat’s cell, and Cynthia stared dejectedly at the big, red DENIED scrawled in Sharpie across her Petition for Injunction, which Judge Davis had thrust at her before she stormed out of CG&P. Guy came up next to her, whispering hoarsely.  
“Jesus, Cyn, don’t you see? That’s going to be their tactic with every judge up to the Supreme Court! We’re screwed, Cynthia, because it’s true. Lestat is a vampire! We’re screwed!”  
“No. There has to be a way.”  
“Well, I’m out of it, right now.”  
“What?”  
“I’m out of it, and if anybody asks I never knew, not until just a minute ago, you hear me? I never really knew!”  
“Of course you knew, and you were happy to profit from it! Lestat de Lioncourt made you rich!”  
“And he’s still going to,” Guy said, pulling out his phone and escaping into the hall. Before the door closed Cynthia heard him saying, “Terry, baby! Do me a solid. Get on the horn and get me some CG&P stock…”  
“You bastard! Guy!” she yelled, but it was no use. The door was closed and he was gone.  
  
“Cynthia,” said Lestat through the intercom. She turned, and there he was, his skin red and blistered.  
“Lestat, I’m so sorry,” she said. “What Guy says is true, they’ll do that with every judge who stands in  
their way, all the way to the Supreme Court.”  
“I’m sorry too, Cynthia,” Lestat replied. “I’ve always tried to shield my servants.”  
“I don’t know what to do,” Cynthia said, a very difficult admission for her.  
“How long until we get to the Supreme Court?” Lestat asked.  
“Oh, Lestat. That’s the thing… with all the appeals, by the time we work our way through the courts, it could be years from now.” Cynthia replied, fighting tears.  
“Years!”  
“Yes.”  
Lestat stalked away, making a circuit of his cell before coming back to the window between Cynthia and himself.  
“Cynthia?” he said. “Do I have your attention?”  
“Yes?”  
“Good. You’re fired, Cynthia.”  
“What?”  
“Don’t take it personally. You’ve done enough. I don’t want you exposed to any liability you don’t have to be. Understand?”  
“But…”  
“I mean it, Cynthia.”  
“Okay,” Cynthia said.  
“Good. Thank you, Cynthia. Now go.”  
She turned and opened the door to the hallway. Halfway through, she turned back.  
“Oh, I forgot. The kids at that theater are having a rally tonight in your honor. I thought that might cheer you up.”  
“Thanks, Cynthia,” Lestat replied. “It does. Goodbye, Cynthia.” And he watched the door close behind her.  
  
In her car, Judge Davis searched her purse and pockets. “Where’s my cell phone?” she asked no one.  
  
In his cell, Lestat moved to the one corner he’d discovered was uncovered by the closed-circuit cameras and pulled Judge Davis’s cellular telephone from the inside pocket of his rumpled jacket. Dialed a long number. Prayed it would work.  
The phone rang once. Twice. Picked up.  
“Ja?” said a voice.  
Lestat smiled, relief coursing through him.  
“Ingmar, ist Lestat,” Lestat replied. “Jag behover din hjalp med en sak.”


	10. CYNTHIA

She sat in her car across from the cinema. Rain was falling. November was L.A.’s rainiest month, and a steady drizzle showed signs of getting serious later. A line had formed down the block from the theater, the kids huddled against the cold and wet, and against the TV crews trying to get sound bites and the religious wackos trying to save their souls. Cynthia got out of her car, picked up the ticket left for her at the box office. Walking to the end of the line, she overheard snippets of talk:  
“It’s not fair!” a girl said. “He belongs to us now! They can’t just take him away!”  
“No way, Dude!” said a boy. “He’ll get free. You can’t keep Lestat in a cage, you’ll see!”  
“These children are mislead. God told me to come here tonight and lead them to the path of true righteousness…”  
  
Cynthia took her place at the end of the line, behind two teen-aged boys who passed a doob back and forth between them.  
“Did you hear?” one of the boys said. “They subpoenaed a copy of the movie. They’re going to try to prove it isn’t fiction.”  
“That’s pretty cool, actually,” the second boy replied. Then the line began to move, and she found herself walking up the faded staircase to the balcony, sitting, unknowingly, in the seat Lestat had sat in.  
  
Below, the mood was subdued. There was no dancing, no rock music, no balloons bouncing back and forth. The stage was now blocked by black curtain, and there was a depressed, funereal feel in the house.  
  
Without preamble, a young woman in a simple black dress, with flame-orange hair and elfin features, stepped through the curtains, and stood, waiting, until the house fell silent. Then, without accompaniment, she began to sing.

_If wishes were horses_  
_Then beggars would ride_  
  
Cynthia winced. Her voice was thin, shaky. But she meant so well, the poor thing. Then music started, strings, warm and supporting. The girl's voice grew stronger.

_If wishes moved mountains_  
_I'd carve the hillsides_  
_If wishes could save you_  
_I'd end this ordeal_  
_But still they enslave you_  
_'Cause wishes aren't real._

She moved downstage, closer to the audience, as the music grew sadder.

_Where do we go from here?_  
_How can we prevail?_  
_How do we persevere_  
_When odds are we fail_  
_What if we cannot win_  
_Haven't got a prayer_

Her body bent, as if weighted down by the sadness of the song.

_Should we stop fighting, give in_  
_And despair…_

And she took the last syllable and stepped it up, note after note after note, her body straightening, rising as the music rose, her voice gaining power, suddenly soaring, full instrumentation flooding in:

_They saw that we are conquered_  
_They say we know the drill_  
_But then they are forgetting_  
  
And tilting her head she nails it, the high note you could hear coming:

_We're really hard to kill._

The music swelled. The black curtains swept open, and a full, robed choir took up the chorus. The audience gasped, cheered, aware something remarkable was happening, and in the balcony, Cynthia choked back a sob.

_They shall not defeat us_  
_They shall not destroy us_  
_The shall not defy us_  
_We will rise again_  
  
The girl sang:

_If wishes were horses_  
_Then beggars would ride_  
_But we have more than wishes_  
_And luck on our side_  
_I know we'll survive_  
_Their foolish rejection_  
_We have more than wishes_  
_We have resurrection!_

Again the chorus, and now the audience has it, is singing along:

_They shall not defeat us_  
_They shall not destroy us_  
_The shall not defy us_  
_We will rise again_  
  
One by one, the audience began to stand.

_They shall not defeat us_  
_They shall not destroy us_  
_The shall not defy us_

And it finishes on a mighty chord:

_We! Will! Rise! A! Gain!_  
  
The audience screamed its defiance, and the girl stalked to the edge of the stage, uttering the words that started every midnight show: _"Start the fucking flick!” ___  
"Start the fucking flick!” Chanted the audience, their stamping feet thundering. “Start the fucking flick! Start the fucking flick!” It was a cry of defiance, the defiance of the young toward every self-serving, compromised, cowardly decision ever made by the adult world. The movie began to a tremendous cheer, and below, Cynthia saw the orange headed girl moving toward the lobby with one of the camera crews, and was suddenly seized by the need to thank her for her song, to let her know how much it would have meant to Lestat. Skirting the side wall of the balcony, she took the stairs to the lobby.  
  
The cameras were already rolling. The girl was speaking, her voice tight and squeaky with emotion.  
  
“Lestat de Lioncourt is a vampire, so what?” she was saying. “Does that mean he has no rights? Is there no room in our world for him? If this movie really does show actual events, then look who he picks for his victims: murderers, rapists, tyrants… maybe Lestat de Lioncourt exists because he was meant to exist!”  
  
“So you think he’s just part of the natural order?” a reporter asked. The girl, turning her head in Cynthia's direction, just happen to make eye contact as she said it, “Maybe he has a _biological imperative_ to do it.”  
  
Cynthia backed away. The reporters had closed around the girl, and now Cynthia’s head was spinning. She left the theater, got in her car. Sat staring blankly at the rain.  
  
_Could it work?_ she was thinking. _Is he part of the natural order? And are you prepared to argue that in Federal Court?_  
She put her head down on the steering wheel. If he is part of the natural order, she thought, then what is the law to do with him? What place in society is he to fill? Is he to be exploited, like a piece of livestock? Or is he a human being, with all the rights and privileges inherent thereto? And if he is, then is he to be tried for his crimes and executed, if state laws apply? Jesus, how many states has he lived in? How many countries? What are the statutes of limitations in those states/countries?  
  
“Can’t someone else ask these questions?” she said out loud, knowing even as she did that no, there was no one else. It had to be her. She was Lestat’s lawyer, and it was Lestat in that cage. If these questions were to be asked, in court, it was she who must ask them. That, or quit now. Cut and run like Guy. Run… or fight.

The anteroom door opened, and Cynthia, soaking wet, entered. A voice in the hall, high-pitched and anxious, was calling, “I’ll have to notify Legal…”  
“You do that,” Cynthia called back. “Court order, Buddy!” and she slapped a wet document up against the window to Lestat’s cell.  
“Cynthia?” Lestat asked. “What are you doing here?”  
“I have a court order allowing you access to counsel pending the determination of your legal status,” Cynthia replied.  
“I thought I fired you,” Lestat said.  
“You were obviously under duress and didn’t know what you were doing.” Despite himself, Lestat smiled.  
“Lestat, I’m going to fight,” Cynthia said. “I’m going to argue that you have rights in spite of what you are. I’m going to argue that you have a biological imperative to do what you do, and that the law must be amended to make room for you.”  
“But, Cynthia, by defending me you open yourself to prosecution.”  
“I know. I don’t care.”  
  
Lestat brought his hand up to the glass, nodded for her to do the same. Across the glass they stood palm-to-palm, until Lestat could stand the searing no longer.  
  
“That court order shuts off the recording devices in this room,” Cynthia said. “And when we’re sure they are off you must tell me everything, even the bad parts. I’ve arranged an expedited hearing in County Superior, and it’s better if we bring up damaging evidence before they do.”  
Lestat thought. “How soon is expedited?” he asked.  
“Two days,” Cynthia replied.  
“Two days… that works,” said Lestat.  
“Works for what?” Cynthia asked.  
“Oh, nothing. Just thinking out loud,” he said. “Pull up a chair, Cynthia. It’s a long story.”  



	11. L.A. SUPERIOR

Six stories below the lighted window of the courtroom, a media circus had taken up residence in the street, their anchors competing for space to shoot without showing another anchor doing just that in the background, packs of Lestat fans surging against barriers. Remy Ramierez, off _Movies Tonight!_ forever, and possessed of the coveted spot just opposite the imposing doors, was saying into her camera, “In the Los Angeles Superior Court tonight, a battle that can only be described as bizarre. On one side a Hollywood megastar, famed for walking the tightrope between fantasy and fact, on the other industrial giant CG &P. At stake: a man’s freedom,< the future of nuclear energy, and just possibly, the definition of what it means to be human.”

In the courtroom, Cynthia paced before the Superior Court judge. Behind her, on one side, sat Eleanor, Courtland and the CG&P lawyers; on the other, studio lawyers, and behind them all, local and national press.  
  
“Your Honor,” Cynthia said, “we are here tonight to determine the legal status of the individual known as Lestat de Lioncourt. You will hear my opponents claim that Mr. de Lioncourt has no rights under the law, because the law guarantees rights to humans only, and that Mr. de Lioncourt is not human. They will tell you that he is a vampire.” She looked up and met the judge’s gaze.  
“Well, Your Honor, they are correct in one thing: Lestat de Lioncourt _is_ a vampire.”  
The observers gasped, and the Judge waved them quiet.  
  
“Are you really sure you want to continue with this, Ms. Carroll?” he asked.  
“Quite sure, Your Honor,” Cynthia replied. “May I?” The judge nodded.  
“He has been so for over two hundred years.” Cynthia said. “Nevertheless, we intend to prove that he was human before he became a vampire, and he is, therefore, human now, despite the physiological changes he has undergone. We intend also to prove that whatever acts he may have committed since that transformation \--assault, robbery, even murder-- were committed against his free will, in response to the overwhelming biological imperative placed upon him by his own body. And now, Your Honor, I would like to call as my first witness Mr. Lestat de Lioncourt.”  
  
There was a jostling as the observers jockeyed for a view of the courtroom doors, and they gasped again as a shiny, silver coffin rolled in on a wheeled cart, escorted by wand-armed CG &P guards, some kind of running machine attached to its top.  
  
“What the hell is that?” one reporter asked another.  
“Uh,” the second reporter replied, reading from a CG&P press release, “It’s, uh, a ‘vapor-diffusion vacuum pump.’ It creates a vacuum inside the coffin, so that anything inside would be pushing not just on the lid but against atmospheric pressure if it tried to get out. And the coffin is made of titanium.”  
“Holy jeez,” the first reporter whistled. “They’re loaded for bear.”  
  
The guards pushed the coffin to the front of the courtroom. They threw a switch, and a great hissing was heard as air sucked into the coffin. They took up posts in the corners of the room as Lestat’s shackled hands pushed up the lid. The observers gasped again as he sat up in the coffin.  
“Cute, you assholes!” he snarled.  
“There will be no swearing in my courtroom, Sir,” the judge remarked.  
Lestat kicked up the lower lid of the coffin and swung his legs over, hopped down.  
“You have my deepest apology, I’m sure,” he drawled.  
  
He checked his wristwatch, and stepped aside as the coffin was wheeled away, sneering at the guards. Cynthia came forward and his expression changed to a smile.  
“Will you take the stand, Mr. de Lioncourt?” she asked, and he did, lounging in the chair, ankles crossed in front of him as Cynthia began her questioning.  
  
“How did you become a vampire?” she asked.  
“I was waylaid one night by a vampire, who drained my blood and then forced me to drink his,” Lestat replied. He shrugged. “The usual.”  
“So you never sought it out?” Cynthia asked.  
“I never even knew it existed,” Lestat replied.  
“Did you fight it?” Cynthia asked.  
“Yes. But I knew from the first what it was my body really wanted.”  
“Human blood.”  
“Yes.”  
“So you took human victims.”  
“Yes. But I’ve always tried to take those I felt to be deserving of death: the thieves, the rapists, the killers worse than myself.”  
“And you continue that pattern today?” Cynthia asked.  
“Yes,” Lestat replied. “There are so many creeps out there even I can’t keep up with them. Internet pedophiles alone take up half my time… I’m only one vampire!”  
A laugh rippled through the room, and the judge said again, “Quiet.”  
  
Cynthia smiled. Was the tide turning? “What happens if you refuse to drink human blood?” she asked.  
“Overwhelming pain,” Lestat responded. “Like being eaten alive from the inside out. Like starving with terminal cancer.”  
“Lestat, let me ask you something: if, in order to live in our society, you had to accept some sort of state regulation, would you do so?”  
“If it meant not being locked up in a cage,” Lestat said, his voice thickening, “not being subjected to excruciating and dehumanizing torture, then yes, I would.” A pink tear rolled down his cheek, and at the prosecutor’s table, Eleanor and Courtland exchanged supessed smiles.  
  
“Thank you, Mr. de Lioncourt,” Cynthia said. “I have nothing more at this time, Your Honor.”  
She walked away, and Courtland Warner stood up. He came up before Lestat, who was still blinking back his tears.  
  
“Would you like a hanky?” he asked. Lestat stopped mid-sniffle and glared at him.  
  
“So,” Courtland said, “Let me get this right, Mr.de Lioncourt. You’ve been a vampire for over two hundred years?  
“Roughly, yes,” Lestat replied.  
“And for most of that time you’ve been taking human victims?”  
“Yes.”  
“How many per night?”  
“Sometimes none. Sometimes I would fight it.” Lestat narrowed his eyes at Courtland.  
“And other times?” Courtland pressed.  
“Sometimes one, sometimes more, depending upon what fate put in my path.”  
“So an average of one per night would be a fair assumption?”  
“I suppose so.”  
Courtland pulled out a pocket calculator. “So two hundred times three hundred and sixty five… Wow, seventy-three thousand! You’ve killed _seventy-three_ _thousand_ people?”  
Lestat didn’t answer.  
“And we’re just supposed to take your word that each and every one of them deserved it? Are you absolutely sure that one or two innocent people didn’t slip in there? One night when you were feeling especially peckish?”  
Again, Lestat did not answer, instead, he checked his watch.  
“What’s the matter, Mr. de Lioncourt? Cat got your tongue?” Courtland asked.  
“No, I just don’t think I’ll answer that question,” Lestat replied.  
“Are you invoking the Fifth Amendment, Mr. de Lioncourt?” The judge asked.  
“No, I mean I’m just not answering the question,” Lestat said, looking again at his watch, looking at the second hand as it swept almost to ten P.M.  
“Why not?” Courtland demanded, and in answer, Lestat held his watch out, making a praying gesture with his shackled hands.  
“Because it’s ten,” he said, as every electronic device in the room gave out an ear-splitting shriek of feedback, as every news feed and connection went dead. Reporters yelled in pain, ripping their off their headsets.  
  
Outside, in the street, all the feeds to the news vans also went dead, and then they all looked up, all the mortals, at the bright flashes of light filling the sky.  
  
“What the hell,” more than one person in the courtroom said, and then they, too, saw the flashes of light, and they rushed to the windows to look.  
“Is it a power outage?” someone asked.  
“Is it a meteor?” someone else asked.  
“Is it an asteroid?” a third person asked.  
“Or is it,” Lestat’s melodious baritone rolled out over them, “The wreckage of an IT &T communications satellite that has dropped into a lower orbit, colliding with the Global Positioning satellite already there?”  
  
Eleanor jumped to her feet. “You fool!” she yelled. “GPS satellites are owned by the American Air Force! _What have you done?!”_  
“I remembered me I was Bagheera, the panther,” Lestat said, quoting Kipling. “And I broke their silly lock with a blow of my paw, and came away.” In a flash, he snapped the shackles binding his wrists. Another blink, and he was nose-to-nose with Eleanor.  
“See ya round, Ellie,” he said, and was across the room, smashing through the window and plummeting in a hail of shattered glass six stories to the ground, landing on the roof of a parked car in front of the news vans, exploding its windows in a sparkling blast before hopping down and bowing to the astonished media.  
  
“Stars falling all over tonight,” he remarked, and to the ecstatic cheering of his fans, was gone.

In the courtroom, bedlam prevailed. Lawyers were yelling into their cell phones, reporters were yelling into their cell phones while simultaneously swarming Eleanor and Courtland, who were yelling into theirs, while the judge futilely banged his gavel, yelling “Order! Order!”  
“We lost him! Without the satellite we have no way of tracking him!” Eleanor yelled into her phone.  
“Well, he got a phone from somewhere, you find out how!” Courtland yelled into his phone.  
“Exclusive, Los Angeles, vampire Lestat de Lioncourt claims responsibility for act of terrorism…” yelled a reporter into his phone.  
“Vampire on rampage in City of Angels!” yelled another.  
CG&P lawyers shoved their phones at Eleanor and Courtland.  
“IT&T is suing us!” one said to Eleanor.  
“The FBI just called Hollingsworth!” another said to Courtland.  
“So did the President,” said a third, turning a deathly white.  
  
Amid the chaos, Cynthia’s cell phone rang. She answered it, got a blast of exultant rock music in her ear.  
She laughed, and everyone else stopped dead and watched her.  
“Yes,” she said into her phone. “Yes. Yes, I understand.” She hung up, noticed everyone looking at her.  
“Dogsitter,” she said.  
Eleanor advanced on her. “You give us your phone records!” she snapped.  
“‘Get a court order!’” Cynthia mimicked back.  
“Where is he?” Eleanor snarled.  
“I really have no idea,” Cynthia demurred.  
“You won’t get away with this!” Eleanor swore.  
“If anyone should be worried about “getting away,” Cynthia said, “I should think it would be you, Dr. Warner,” and felt a grim joy, as, for the first time, fear came into Eleanor Warner’s eyes.

Perhaps the _Vampire Lestat_ sets should have been dismantled by now to make way for a new production, but Lestat was sentimental about his movie and his money had preserved them --perhaps fittingly-- beyond their natural life. Now it was to them that he turned, unable to go to any of his homes, needing somewhere, something, to assuage his aching soul.  
  
He entered the huge, cavernous soundstage, rolling back the great door with a push of his hand, and there they were, his sets, towering, creepy, gothic. He ripped off his soiled jacket and smacked his fist into a reel-to-reel tape deck marked PLAYBACK.  
  
Music boomed forth, filling the vast space, insistent, powerful, menacing. It was a song from his movie, from the scene where he defeats the other vampires, a song about rage, vengeance and raging hunger, and he sang along with it, double-tracking his own voice, singing it, this time, to Eleanor. He danced through the sets, ripping it up and kicking it out until suddenly, the overhead work lights snapped on, completely spoiling the mood.  
  
“Hey!” yelled an overweight security guard. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”  
“Just playing on my sets, hope you don’t mind!” Lestat yelled back.  
“Your sets? These belong to the studio, pal!” the guard challenged, puffing up to Lestat.  
“Yeah, but it’s my movie, and it just made them a couple hundred million dollars. Don’t you recognize me?” Lestat said.  
“Aw, I don’t go to movies,” the guard replied. “You’re gonna have to leave, Buddy.”  
“But I’m Lestat de Lioncourt!” Lestat said.  
“Yeah, well, you can’t be here, ‘Lestat de Lioncourt’!” the guard sneered, and he punctuated "be" by jabbing Lestat in the shoulder with his nightstick.  
  
Lestat stared in disbelief at his shoulder, then looked up, into the guard's mind, to the image of his cowering ten-year-old daughter, whimpering _“Daddy, no...”_  
“Oh… merci,” he breathed. “Merci beaucoup…!”  
  
On the playback, the music swelled, reaching a crescendo both beautiful and terrible, and Lestat pulled the guard close in a deadly embrace. He sank his fangs, and the blood hit his palate, flowed down his throat, washed through his gut or whatever was still down there, and suffused his entire being. His knees buckled, and they went to the floor together. He drained the guard dry, and finished with his head bowed low over the dead man’s chest.  
  
Then the music picked up again, moving into its finale, and Lestat sang with it again, ending on a verse that seemed  
to promise great things in store for Eleanor Warner.  



	12. THE DIAL PAINTERS

The radio in Deke Hollingsworth’s massive SUV was tuned to the news channel.  
  
“…Grows ever more bizarre,” the announcer was saying, “in the two days since his disappearance, the U.S District Attorney has taken the unprecedented step of accusing movie star Lestat de Lioncourt in absentia of treason, stemming from the destruction of a Global Positioning Satellite owned by the U.S. Air Force. Dr. Eleanor Warner, the researcher most associated with the experiments on de Lioncourt, has gone into hiding at an undisclosed location. Industrial giant CG&P now faces criminal negligence charges leveled by the U.S. District Attorney and rival giant International Telecommunications and Technology. With a preliminary hearing this very night, CG&P CEO Deke Hollingsworth has refused any comment--”  
  
Deke snapped off the radio, took a belt from the flask in his hand.  
“Jeez, Deke, take it easy!” Chuck Mahoney said. “You have to testify in a few hours!”  
“Shut up,” Deke replied, drinking again.  
  
Without warning, Lestat dropped out of the sky onto the hood of the SUV. Deke and Chuck both screamed, Deke’s flask cartwheeling out of his hand.  
  
Lestat pulled back a fist as if to punch through the windshield, but then brought his hand forward, turned it, traced it gently over the glass, using his vampiric senses to find just the right spot... he tapped on the glass with one of his rings and it shattered, falling in a shower of harmless cubes.  
  
“Hello, Deke,” Lestat said.  
“Jesus Christ!” Deke said.  
“Not exactly, but thanks,” Lestat replied. “So tell me, Deke: How much do you really know about Dr. Eleanor Warner?”  
“What?”  
“Well, it occurred to me,” Lestat said, “As I was lying on my deck, enjoying the moonlight, that none of this would have happened if that tape --you know, the one where I’m tortured?-- had not somehow got to the press. My lawyer’s done some checking, interviewed the men who were on the team the night it was taken… turns out, the tape was in her possession, wasn’t it?”  
“Yeah…?” Deke said, eyes narrowing priggishly.  
“So no one actually saw it stolen, except for her, right? Everyone else was slowed down by heavy equipment? And no one actually saw that cousin of hers get knifed, either, did they? Here’s a question for you, Deke: have you looked closely at Courtland’s Warner’s wrist lately?”  
Deke was silent. Lestat continued.  
“Here’s something else you might not know. I didn’t, until my lawyer told me: Eleanor testified that she’d obtained her doctorate from Cal Tech, right? Here’s the thing, Cal Tech is very picky. They accept only about two hundred students a year, and every one of those applicants is screened three times. In short, they know who’s on campus and who’s not. Now, if you call them up and get someone who just punches her name into a database, you get a file stating that Eleanor Warner went there, and graduated with honors. But if you actually go there, and talk to the professors whose classes she would have taken to obtain that degree, they’ve never heard of her.”  
“What?” Deke said.  
“Don’t take my word for it,” Lestat replied. “Check it out for yourself. Look, Deke, I don’t know who she is or what her game is, but I’d bet money that you’ve been played for a chump. I think you were so blinded by greed you gave her everything she wanted. She _wanted_ that tape to get out, and she used you to do it. Gee, I wonder what the stockholders are making of all this? Your résumé all updated, Deke?” Lestat smiled beatifically. “Well, that’s about all, I guess,” he said. “Nice talkin’ to you,” and he vanished.  
  
“God damn it!” Deke said. He turned to Chuck. “That bitch lied to us, Chuck!” he yelled. “She never went to Cal Tech! She took that fucking tape, she gave it to the goddamned media! She fucked us over! I’m gonna kill her!”  
“Easy, Deke, you’re drunk,” Chuck tried to soothe.  
“Maybe, but I’m gonna go confront the bitch right now,” Deke said  
“But she’s in hiding,” Chuck said.  
“Aw, hell, Chuck,” Deke slurred, “they’re at the Noche del Cicada, it’s a crappy motel up off Sunset. Now switch seats with me: I can’t drive.”  
They switched seats, and Chuck started the SUV, driving out of the CG &P parking lot and heading toward Hollywood. From the roof of the building, Lestat watched them go.

At the motel, a door opened, spilling the sound of a TV into the night and a splash of light across the pool. Eleanor stepped into the doorway, an ice bucket in her hand. She still wore her lab coat, her hair still up in its usual bun. A man’s voice followed her outside.  
“Be careful,” it said.  
“I will,” Eleanor replied. She walked down to the corner ice machine, filled her bucket, turned back to the room.  
  
“Hello, bitch,” Deke Hollingsworth said, looming out of the shadows.  
  
Startled, Eleanor dropped the ice bucket, the cubes clattering to the pool tarmac.  
“Deke!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here? Someone could have followed you!”  
  
“Who you working for, huh? Who’d you sell us out to?” Deke demanded.  
“What are you talking about?” Eleanor said.  
“You never went to Cal Tech, did you?”  
“Who told you that?” Eleanor said, paling.  
“Never you mind. You sold us out, didn’t you? You took that file, you gave it to the media!”  
“That’s absurd! You’re drunk!”  
“Why?” Deke cried, “Why did you do it?”  
  
He grabbed her wrist. She struggled to get away, but her foot hit one of the cubes of ice on the pavement. She spun, arms cantilevering out, and fell, her head striking one of the poles supporting the motel balcony. She dropped, unconscious, to the ground.  
“Jesus, Deke!” Chuck gasped.  
  
“Bitch!” Deke said, now actually crying, tears running down his face. “Fucking bitch! You ruined my life!” And in a paroxysm of rage, he kicked Eleanor’s unconscious body into the pool.  
  
“Deke! My God, Deke!” Chuck gasped.  
“She took my life! She took my fucking life!” was all Deke could say.  
  
Chuck moved toward the pool, but Deke grabbed him back. He pointed to the fallen cubes of ice.  
“She slipped, Chuck,” he said. “She stepped on the ice and she slipped up. And if you wanna keep your job you’ll get us out of here right now.” He dragged Chuck away, into the night, and a few seconds later came the sound of the SUV starting up.  
  
Behind them, in the pool, Eleanor’s body began to sink. She floated downward, breathing water. Her hair came loose of its bun, floating free. Her body convulsed, vomited dark material into the blue water. Her eyes grew wide and blank.  
  
Above, there was a muffled splash, and a man’s hand reached down through the water, twining in her loosened hair. It yanked her up.  
  
Backlit by a full, glaucous moon, Lestat de Lioncourt lowered Eleanor’s body to the tarmac. He bent her head back, exposed her helpless throat… and placed his mouth over hers, breathing his air into her lungs. He watched as her chest rose and fell in time to his breaths, once, twice.  
  
Eleanor coughed, spat water. Lestat backed off, pushing her disdainfully with his foot, rolling her onto her side.  
Eleanor coughed and gagged, hacking water from her lungs. She looked up, dazed.  
“Finished?” Lestat asked.  
“How did I get in the pool?” she gasped.  
“Deke Hollingsworth kicked you in,” Lestat replied.  
“And you… you saved me?” Eleanor said.  
“Yes, well, as you so carefully pointed out to Brian,” Lestat said, “I breathe.”  
To that, Eleanor had no answer.  
“Yes,” Lestat continued. “Brian and I had quite a charming téte a téte while you were off plotting my eternal incarceration. Seems someone gave him a book on radiation, and in that book was the story of the dial painters.”  
  
He continued, his voice weaving the tale, invoking images. “The dial painters were young women employed in factories in the early twentieth century,” he said. “They painted glow-in-the-dark numbers on watch dials, using radium-laced paint. Indeed, the first inkling anyone had that radium was dangerous came when these young women began to fall ill, when their bones began to snap as they simply walked down the street, and, as Brian pointed out, they became anemic to the point of death.”  
  
Lestat crossed his arms over his chest. “They had almost no red blood cells. They had been exsanguinated, as surely as if they had been the victims of a vampire, and why? Because in order to paint the tiny numerals on the watch dials, they would draw the tips of their brushes through their lips, and every time they did so, they ingested minute amounts of pure radium. And radium, Brian tells me, has the same number and configuration of electrons as calcium. They appear in the same column of the periodic table.”   
He continued. “So when radium is put into a human body, it tends to go where the calcium goes: to the bones. Where it kills the tissue that makes blood cells, the marrow. The dial painters had no red blood cells because their irradiated bone marrow couldn’t make them.”  
  
Lestat bore in on Eleanor. “And you know what I’m going to say next, don’t you? That calcium appears above radium in the periodic table… and directly above it, is magnesium.”  
  
Eleanor was silent, picturing the oh-so-familiar table in her mind.  
  
“And irradiated magnesium --the product of cellular fission--” Lestat said, “lodges in the bones just as does irradiated calcium, killing the blood cells, and red blood cells carry oxygen around the body. So if someone were to, say, have irradiated magnesium in his bones --but doesn’t die, because the same process that makes it also produces enough energy to overcome it-- but still needs red blood cells because he still breathes, but can’t make them because he’s got irradiated magnesium in his bones, well, _he’d have to get them from someone else,_ wouldn’t he? He’d have to take them from living creatures already using them, and being once human himself, human blood would be the closest match. He’d have to be cunning, and ruthless, and seductive, and pretty, to attract his victims, and oh, yes, pointy little eyeteeth would be a great help too, now wouldn’t they? You _gave_ all that to Brian,” he said, wonderment in his voice. “He’s going to win a Nobel Prize for it, and you _gave it away.”_  
  
He shook his head, finally stripped down to honest bafflement. “Who are you?” he asked. “What prize are you playing for, if not for that? And what information could possibly be left in your head that you would go to the length of having an implant put in your brain to prevent me knowing it?”  
  
Eleanor looked away.  
  
“Still won’t talk?” Lestat said. “Well, I’m sorry, Ella, I really am. Because I’m afraid I cannot leave here without learning what I came to know, and it doesn’t matter that you won’t tell me. It doesn’t matter that you’ve got an implant in your brain. Blood never lies, Eleanor, blood never lies. Come here, Eleanor.”  
  
He dragged her over, and she struggled to get away.  
  
“You have no idea how much that arouses me, Eleanor,” Lestat said, and sank his fangs.  
  
The world dissolved again into a red haze, the blood warm and pulsing as it flowed down his throat, and then came the images: blood, the bloody rings drawn on this tabletop, the periodic table, and then, finally, a locked door. Lestat licked his lips. “What’s behind the door, Eleanor?” he asked. “Hmm? Shall we find out?” and again, he bent his head and drank her blood.  
  
More images. The door swinging open into a red haze that resolved itself into a laboratory, a laboratory in some kind of conservatory or greenhouse, in a house, on a hill.  
“Hm. I know that house,” Lestat said, surfacing. “It’s up in the hills, you can see the greenhouse glowing at night. What will I find there, Eleanor?” A third time, he bent to drink.  
  
“Let her go,” said a man’s voice.  
“Now who are you, pretty one?” Lestat said to the slender, dark-haired man standing before him, armed with an X-ray wand. Behind him stood Courtland Warner, similarly armed.  
  
“Ah,” said Lestat. “You’re the dark one took the tape. And you were there the night they took me, weren’t you? I remember you. And you care about this woman, you care deeply. So Ilsa the She-Wolf has a lover!” he said, grinning down at Eleanor, “Curiouser and curiouser!”  
  
“Just let her go,” the dark-haired man said.  
“Or you’ll burn me?” Lestat asked. “I daresay you will. Well, little one, you’re in luck. I’m finished with her… for now.” Standing, he dropped Eleanor roughly to the pavement.  
  
“I have your blood now, Eleanor,” he said. “So as you once said to me, there is now nowhere on Earth you can hide.” And Eleanor, on the ground, beaten, half-drowned and bloody, Eleanor, damn her, just met his gaze and said levelly:  
“I accept those odds.”  
  
The men raised their weapons, and Lestat was obliged to disappear. They rushed to Eleanor.  
“Recapture the signal?” she asked.  
“Oh, yes,” Courtland replied. “Are you all right?”  
“I will be,” she replied, “But he got the greenhouse. He knows where it is.”  
“Endgame, then,” Courtland said.  
“Yes.”  
“So we go to the safe-house,” her lover said.  
“Yes, it’s time. Can you get our things, Courtesan?” she said.  
“Sure, Rella.” he replied, and went back inside the motel room. Her lover took her hands and helped her up. Standing, they looked each other in the eyes.  
“Let me look,” he said, pulling a pen light from a pocket and shining it into her eyes, checking her pupils.  
“I should have known he’d use Deke,” she replied, as he clicked off the light, then laid her wet head on his shoulder, “Just one too many details…”  
“I’m so sorry,” her lover replied. “I didn’t hear. I was in the bathroom melting the ice.”  
“What if he misses the mugs?” she said.  
“We pin-spotted them,” he replied, “He won’t.” He sighed, then crooked a finger under her chin. “You so owe me, Amborella,” he said  
She held him close. “I know, Fen,” she replied.


	13. ELEANOR'S

Brian pulled up to the house in the Hollywood hills in his twelve-year-old sedan, the one with the dented quarter-panel and the duct-taped tail-light. His headlights swept the driveway, illuminating Lestat leaning against his Lamborghini in a tailored suit of pale linen.  
Brian parked and got out. “Hi, Brian,” Lestat said. “Thanks for coming.”  
“How could I refuse?” Brian said, that blush suffusing his cheeks. “So,” he said, “what is this place?”  
“It’s your boss’ house,” Lestat replied. “Cynthia checked, it’s in Eleanor’s name. You’ve never been here?”  
“No, never.”  
“Want to go in?”  
“Isn’t that illegal?” Brian asked. Lestat sighed.  
“Brian… I’m facing treason charges, conspiracy charges, and oh, yes, seventy-three thousand counts of first-degree murder. Do you really think a little breaking and entering’s going to stop me?” Lestat asked. He walked over to the front door and easily shouldered it open, pulling the dead-bolt right out of the frame.  
  
They walked through the darkened, empty house, Lestat easily, Brian groping his way after.  
“Why do you want me here?” Brian whispered.  
“Because there’s a laboratory in this house,” Lestat whispered back. “And I might need an interpreter.”  
  
Moving to the back of the house, they came to the glassed-in conservatory. Lestat touched the light switch and overhead fluorescents blinked on, illuminating benches and tables covered in plants, potting tools, hoses.  
“What are we looking for?” Brian asked.  
“I don’t really know,” Lestat replied, “But I--”  
He broke off, his attention captured by a darkened room off one side of the conservatory, from the doorway of which came a strange, gurgling sound.  
  
They moved toward it, their feet crunching on the gravel floor. At the doorway, Lestat reached around the door jamb, feeling for light switches. He found them, flipped them on.  
  
The room was full with small aquariums on tables, all filled with murky water and some kind of plants, the gurgling of the aerating pumps providing a creepy background noise. Moving closer, Lestat and Brian got a better look at one of the plants.  
  
It rode on the surface of the water, its center formed by overlapping leaves, its roots hidden in the dark water. Reaching in with a fingertip, Lestat touched it, and they gasped as it unfolded, revealing on its glistening inner leaves a tiny skeleton.  
“What the Hell?” Lestat said. He moved to another aquarium, touched another plant, which also unfolded, revealing a similar, but not identical, tiny skeleton. He touched another, and another: all skeletons.  
“Okay,” he said. “This is weird. Even by my standards.”  
“What are they?” Brian asked.  
Bending lower, Lestat could make out the labels. “They have labels,” he said. “This one is _Microtitus_ _oregoni._ Whatever that is.”  
Brian looked around, and on a nearby shelf he spotted a well-thumbed copy of the _Encyclopedia_ _Animalia._ He pulled it down and turned to the index. He found the page.  
“ _Mictotus oregoni_ … here. A creeping meadow vole.”  
“And this one,” Lestat said, _“Sorex minutissinus.”_  
Brian flipped pages. “A least shrew,” he said.  
“ _Mus musculus?”_  
“House mouse.” Brian set down the book, gazed at the plants. “They’re like giant sundews…” he said.  
“These are all the skeletons of small mammals,” Lestat said. “Sundews don’t catch mammals, do they?”  
“Look, below the labels: dates, weights,” Brian said, pointing. “These are experiments.”  
“So?”  
“So the purpose of experimentation is to find out what you _don’t_ know,” Brian said. “All the carnivorous plants I ever heard of trap insects… maybe the point of these experiments is to find out how these plants react to mammals.”  
“But why?” Lestat asked, staring at the plants. Then a thought occurred, and a look of grim curiosity crossed his face. He suddenly plunged both hands into the aquarium’s peaty water.  
“Lestat, don’t!” Brian gasped. But Lestat was ripping the plant from its place, his hands bringing up from the water a swollen sac, dark red amid slithery roots. He was trying to be careful, but suddenly the sac burst, spewing bright red blood all over his linen suit.  
“My God!” Brian said.  
“ _That’s_ what they do with the mammals,” Lestat said. “They take their blood. Vampire plants!” He turned to Brian, eyes bright. “How do you get from porphyrin rings in a textbook to, ‘of course, vampires.’” he said, speaking aloud the question that had come to him in his cell as he’d painted the interlocking rings in his own blood, and Brian recognized the question he’d tried to ask Eleanor that day in the hall, just before she’d given him the book on radiation. “Knowing about these plants would really help with that cognitive leap, wouldn’t they? Eleanor Warner is a scientist, Brian, but these plants are her true work, and she knew about them before she ever came to me.”  
“But… _why?”_ Brian said.  
“I have no ide--” Lestat started to say, but then broke off, because he’d turned toward the door, the door through which they had entered, and there, off to one side of it, sat a small table, a small table in a pool of light, on top of which sat two glass mugs. One of the mugs, Lestat saw as he drew closer to them, contained a milky, watery fluid, the tag of a tea bag still hanging over its lip; the other contained a red fluid, the same red fluid now spattering the front of his suit. The mug with the tea bag was etched with the word HERS, and the other, Lestat saw as it picked it up and turned it in his hand, was etched HIS.  
  
Lestat looked from the mug to Brian, his eyes growing wide. “The dark one,” he said. “The dark one who knows how people bleed.” And there came into his mind a memory, a memory he’d forgotten he > even had, buried as it was in the exigencies of the moment and all that had happened since. In his mind’s eye he saw again what he’d seen in the street the night they caught him, the woozy memory just before the narcotic closed his eyes, as the medic came up next to Eleanor, his hands bloody from the soldier's gashed throat. In his mind's eye, he watched as Eleanor’s lover brought his hand to his face, and licked the blood from his hand.  
“You _harpy_ _.”_ Lestat said, almost wonderingly.  
“What?” Brian said, but Lestat was looking at his watch. “There’s still time,” he said. “Come on!”  
He spun and darted out of the room, retracing his steps, Brian stumbling after.  
  
“Lestat, wait!” Brian cried, barking his shin on some piece of furniture. “Where are we going?”  
“My treason hearing!” Lestat called back. “It’s starting in fifty minutes and I need to know, and there’s just one way to find out!”  
“But they’ll capture you… find out what? wait, what...what’s going on?!” Brian pulled up short as Lestat spun around to face him at the front door of the house, his hands on either side of the frame.  
“She outs _me,”_ he said, eyes blazing. “She reveals _me_ to the world as a vampire while she--? Oh, I think two can play that game!” He spun again, running out into the driveway, and Brian followed, running smack into Lestat’s back and bouncing off, as Lestat had stopped short, was standing, with his arms crossed, staring disdainfully at Brian’s crappy car.  
Lestat looked at Brian.  
  
“Ever ride in a Lamborghini?” he asked.


	14. FEDERAL COURT

The courtroom of the United States District Court was packed, with local and international press jostling for room with officers of the United States Air Force and their lawyers, representatives from the NSA, The NRC and FBI, Executives from IT&T and their lawyers, CG&P executives and their lawyers, Magna Studios executives and their lawyers, while guards armed with both automatic rifles and X-ray wands patrolled the perimeter. Deke Hollingsworth --now sober-- sat stoically in the front row, a pale Chuck Mahoney next to him, Courtland Warner and an empty chair reserved for Eleanor on Chuck’s other side. Eleanor’s lover, still unknown to most, sat in the row behind Courtland, and across the aisle, Judge Laverna Davis sat next to her husband. On the other side of the bar, the U.S. District Attorney and his staff had one table; Lestat’s defense team, hand-picked by Cynthia, the other.  
  
The door at the back opened, and Eleanor entered. Cynthia, who was standing in front of her table gathering papers, looked up, saw her, and gasped.  
  
She had transformed. Her hair was down and softly styled, the mousy grey washed out in an bronze rinse. The clunky glasses were gone, her makeup applied with a deft touch. She wore heels and a wrap dress in a silky black knit, and without the lab coat Cynthia could see she actually had a figure. As she turned to enter the seating row, Cynthia’s feminine eye noticed the fishnet stockings encasing her legs.  
  
The Federal Judge called the hearing to order, and Cynthia gathered herself, said her preliminary remarks, ending with the words all defense attorneys said at the beginning of every trial, on the off chance it just might happen:  
“I move this trial be dismissed--”  
“That won’t be necessary, Cynthia,” said Lestat, striding down the aisle into the courtroom to audible gasps, guns and wands leveling at him from all directions. Behind him, Brian appeared, slightly green, hanging onto the door frame for support.  
“Lestat!” Cynthia cried. “What are you doing here?!” Her eyes dropped. “My God!” she exclaimed. “Whose blood is that?”  
“Mus musculus,” Lestat replied. “So, where is the little bitch?” he wondered aloud.  
“She’s right here,” Eleanor replied, standing.  
“Oh, not you, honey,” Lestat said and in an almost invisible flow of movement he was over the railing, knocking her aside, bowling observers out of the way, and fastening on her lover, propelling them both to the floor, his fangs driving deep into the veins of the man’s throat.  
  
The world disappeared. Blood, just blood, hot, mawkish, metallic: then a swirling blackness, and a sensation, undeniable, of vastness, of nothingness all around, of utter, annihilating, unbearable _space._ Then a light bloomed, dusky, febrile, as deeply red as venous blood, a light that resolved itself into a star, a smoldering sun shining upon a dark world of jagged black mountains, untracked forests, and bogs, endless bogs, bogs stretching away into the perpetual night, bogs filled with bloody plants, plants harvested by hundreds, nay, thousands, of black-haired, pale-skinned people, people who drank blood on an alien world.  
  
Lestat withdrew his fangs, stared in horror at the man beneath him.  
“Impossible,” he breathed.  
“Blood never lies,” the man replied.  
“I’m still telling,” Lestat said.  
“I can’t stop you,” said Fen, playing out the last of the rope.  
  
Lestat stood, faced the courtroom, the cameras, the eyes of the world.  
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he announced. “You know what I am. But you do not know what these people are. They are not what they seem. They are, in fact--”  
Quick as a cat, Eleanor pulled the orange wig she’d worn onstage at the Galaxy Cinema out of her bag and tossed it at Lestat’s feet.  
He stared at it, then up at her, at Courtesan, at Fen, and a series of images began to flash before his eyes:  
The wig on the floor.  
The wig on the girl at the theater.  
The girl at the theater, in her corset and fishnets.  
The fishnets on Eleanor’s legs.  
The plant bursting blood through his hands.  
The blood on Fen’s hands.  
Eleanor, mouthing the words “I accept those odds.”  
The alien world of Fen’s mind, and the white faces staring at him, expectant.  
The faces of the audience at the movie theater, turning en masse from the screen to the back row, as if turning to him, also expectant.  
And finally, the marquee of the cinema itself, blinking GALAXY, GALAXY, GALAXY.  
  
“No,” he said as he finally, finally got it, realizing simultaneously that it had been a game all along, a great game, and that he had lost, because he couldn’t say it, just couldn’t, because his own argument _had_ been that any mortal scientist who tried to tell the world that vampires existed would be locked up as a looney, and if he told them that these were aliens from the Galaxy of Transylvania, that _The Rocky_ _Horror Picture Show_ had been real, vampire or no vampire, they'd lock _him_ up. He covered his face with his hands as his brain reeled.  
“That squirming sensation in your forehead?” he heard Eleanor say. “That would be the mindfuck. I hear they can be nice.” He looked up, and she added, with utter finality, “Check… _mate.”_  
“What?” said Cynthia.  
“They're aliens,” Lestat said.  
“What?” said Cynthia  
“You didn’t see the montage,” said Fen.  
“ _What?”_ said Cynthia.  
“Oh, fuck it,” Eleanor said, and she threw back her head and threw out her arms and the music crashed in, music without apparent source or support because music follows Transylvanians, music that swept up every living soul in the room, because music _can,_ and she sang:

_Two houses, both alike_  
_In fantastic possibility_  
_Two planets, one so psyched_  
_To push the plausibility_  
_You onstage, raging your defiance_  
_You egotistic you_  
_We with our unearthly science_  
_Oh how could we resist you?_  
  
And Lestat, who was laughing now, because he was the only one on the whole planet in on the joke, was singing along, though he didn’t know why or how:

_When worlds collide_  
_Oh we were meant to be_  
_We must be allied_  
_Cause you are you and we are we_  
_Emotion so elational_  
_The tugging of the tide_  
_Attraction gravitational_  
_Whenever worlds collide_  
  
“Transexual?” Lestat asked Eleanor.  
"Venereal,” she replied, and then she and her lover were singing together, the magic music becoming dark, lush, ravishing:

_Venereal, Venereal_  
_Land of the Venari_  
_Venereal, Venereal_  
_Dark and sanguin-ary_  
_In orbit 'round a melancholic sun_  
_Venereal: we're the gothic one_  
_Venereal, Venereal_  
_Blood and bog and gloam_  
_Venereal, Venereal_  
_Our dark and bloody home_

Returning to Lestat, Eleanor sang:

_So thanks for your compliance_  
_With our stranger science_  
_Though it t'was weird and uncanny, too_  
_Because confounding those of Earth_  
_With song and dance and mirth_  
_You understand it's what Trannies DO._  
_And a goal of our arrival_  
_Was to outdo our rival_  
_With a wonder of more impressive size_  
_The measure of a planet_  
_You're kidding: Brad and Janet?_  
_I think you will agree we won the greater prize._

"Wait a minute,” Lestat said, “You mean to tell me that I've just been some kind of pawn in an inter- galactic pissing contest?”  
“ _Intra-_ galactic, yes.” she replied. And then she waited through four beats of the music while the thought bounced around in his head like a ping-pong ball, before:  
I _am_ the center of the universe!” She collapsed.  
"I love you!” she sobbed helplessly into her hands, and he patted her shoulder. You and everyone else, Sister.

It picked up again, all major keys and bouncing beats, and now lawyerly toes were tapping, soldierly hips swinging, everyone was singing, the court reporter diligently recording the lyrics.

_When worlds collide_  
_Oh we were meant to be_  
_We must be allied_  
_Cause you are you and we are we_  
_Emotion so elational_  
_The tugging of the tide_  
_Attraction gravitational_  
_Whenever worlds collide_

_When worlds collide_  
_Oh we were meant to be_  
_We must be allied_  
_Cause you are you and we are we_  
_Emotion so elational_  
_The tugging of the tide_  
_Attraction gravitational_  
_Whenever worlds collide_

The song ended on its ebullient button, and the judge began rapping his gavel, as if awakening from a dream.  
“Cease this at once!” he demanded, coming to his senses. “This is a courtroom, not a cabaret! We have a hearing to conduct!”  
“No, I don’t think so,” Lestat replied.  
“I beg your pardon?” the judge barked.  
“Well, your Honor,” Lestat replied, “I think the plaintiffs are about to drop the charges.”  
“What?” said the judge. “They are?”  
“Yes. CG&P, because if they don’t, and they’re claiming me as their property,” Lestat said, turning his head, nailing Deke and Chuck with his gaze, “Then they become legally responsible for my actions under the laws governing product liability.” He smiled as the two executives blanched, having obviously never thought of that.  
“If, on the other hand, they release me,” Lestat continued, “I’ll be glad to pay for all the damages myself.” He addressed the lawyers from IT&T. “You guys want a new satellite? I’ll buy you a new satellite, with more bells and whistles than you can imagine.” He addressed the military officers. “You, too.” He turned back to the judge. “And everybody who lost money or suffered in any way because the satellites collided, I’ll take care of them, as well.”  
“You can do that?” said the judge.  
“I’m over two hundred years old,” Lestat replied. “I have more money than God.” And suddenly he was across the courtroom, nose-to-nose with Hollingsworth.  
“Besides, Deke,” he said, sotto voce, “If you don’t release me, I’ll tell the nice Federal Judge over there how I personally witnessed you kick an unconscious woman into a swimming pool. Deal?”  
The District Attorney weighed in. “But what about the treason?” he said.  
“What treason?” Lestat replied. “I had a problem, and taking out the satellites was the only way to get rid of it. I never meant to overthrow the government. If you want me to stand trial for treason, okay, but I think you’re going to have a hard time proving it. And if there is no treason, then there is no conspiracy.” “But what about the murders?” the D.A. said.  
“Mr. District Attorney,” Lestat sighed. “Do you have one shred of evidence that I ever committed one single murder? Let alone seventy-three thousand? Do you?”  
“Well, actually…” said the D.A.  
“Exactly,” Lestat said.  
“There is still the battery charge brought by Judge Laverna Davis,” the judge reminded them. Lestat looked at Judge Davis.  
“Judge Davis?” he asked, and Laverna Davis exchanged a long, meaningful look with her husband. “I drop the charges,” she said.  
“So, out-of-court settlements! Cynthia, write these people checks, I’ll sign them tonight. Deke? You letting me go?”  
“…Yes.”  
“Mr. D.A?”  
“…Yes.”  
“Military guys?”  
“….Yes.”  
“Well then,” Lestat said, holding out his arms and turning like a circus ringmaster. “That’s that! Happy endings can be bought!” and the room applauded.  
“Just one goddamned minute!” cried the judge, and it was clear that there was something bothering him, something he was extremely loathe to mention but which, in good conscience, he just couldn’t leave alone.  
“What was up with all that singing?” he demanded. “Care to explain that?”  
Lestat looked at Eleanor. She smiled back, letting him have the line.

“Of course, your Honor,” Lestat said. “There are vampires in Transylvania.”

The judge stared. “Well of course there are,” he said. “Everyone knows that. Well then,” he continued, “After careful consideration, and pending a more thorough hearing at a date to be determined, I hereby find that Lestat de Lioncourt is the legal property of himself, with all the rights and responsibilities adherent thereto, and this hearing is adjourned!” He banged his gavel, and the room erupted in a mighty cheer.  
Lestat scooped up Eleanor, spinning her around.  
“Marry me!” he cried.  
“I can’t, I’m already married,” she replied, her husband moving up like a shadow behind her.  
“Well then, what do you want?” Lestat said. “Diamonds, pearls, the Taj Mahal? Name it!”  
“I don’t need your money!” she laughed.  
“I must do something!” Lestat pleaded.  
“Fine,” she said, squirming out of his grasp, “Buy us Oakley Court.”  
She moved away to Fen and Courtesan, gathering their things, and Lestat turned to Brian.  
“What’s Oakley Court?” he asked.  
"Beats me," Brian replied.

They all moved into the hall outside the courtroom, where they were swarmed by reporters.  
“Lestat! How do you feel?” yelled one.  
“Lestat, what was all that singing?” yelled another. “Is there going to be a _Vampire Lestat_ sequel?”  
“Dr. Warner, why are you dressed like that?” yelled a third.  
“This is impossible,” Lestat said. “Want to get away?”  
“We can go to the safe house where we’ve been staying,” Eleanor replied.  
“Yes, where it is?” Lestat asked.

Outside the glass-and-chrome cantilevered split-level in the canyon, Lestat pinched his eyes together.  
“This is _my_ house.” he said.  
“Safest place in L.A.,” Eleanor replied. “You were going to kill me, remember?”  
“‘Bring forth men children only,’” Lestat said to her. “‘Thy undaunted mettle should compose nothing  
but males.’” She laughed, and together they went inside.

They sat around an exquisite rosewood Queen Anne table, where Eleanor held out a hand to Lestat.  
“I'm Amborella,” she said.  
“Amborella?” Lestat echoed.  
“Its a plant,” she replied. “A primitive flower of interest to botanists. My father was a botanist and he gave the name to me.”  
“And you are also a botanist,” Lestat said.  
“Botanist by training. Botanical hemotologist by neccessity.”  
“From a world where the very plants give blood.”  
“Yes.”  
“And the singing?”  
“Musical galaxy,” Fen replied.  
“Oh, of course,” Lestat acceded.  
“We were invited to become part of the Galaxy,” Fen said. “So we applied… _.and then they said no._ “Why not?” we asked. “Because you're not _Transylvania_ enough,” they said. “Well what does _that_ mean?” we asked. ““Darkness,”they said, check,“singing and dancing,” check, check,“weird science,” check, “Go to Earth,  
mindfuck an Earthling.””  
"And you chose _me,”_ Lestat said in wonderment.  
"Wouldn't you?” Amborella asked.  
“You also had something we need,” Fen said, “Venereal is a Darkworld.” and he placed on the table a black box, which he opened, exposing a row of sealed test tubes in a rack, each one containing a pinkish-red liquid, a pinkish-red liquid that was glowing. Lestat picked up one of the tubes, twirled it between his fingers.  
“So that’s _it,”_ he said.  
“That’s the physical manifestation of _it,”_ Amborella replied. “That’s _it_ caught in a web of organic chemistry.” She shrugged. “Whatever else _it_ might or might not be, frankly, Lestat, I don’t give a damn.”  
“We’re going cross this with single-cell bacteria,” Fen continued, “Bacteria that will feed upon the blood from our plants, bacteria that will convert iron into magnesium, generating power, bringing light and warmth to a previously dark world…”  
“Freeing us from our dangerous reliance on a single-crop economy,” added Amborella.  
“And once we have it, a cheap, safe source of biological nuclear power, the galaxy will come to us!” Courtesan finished, a certain megalomaniacal tone to his voice.  
“Ensuring the prosperity and security of the Venari for generations to come?” Fen suggested quietly to Courtesan, suggesting that Courtland really, really wanted to re-think his position.  
“Well, yes,” Courtesan said, abashed, “That too.”  
So,” Lestat said, trying to wrap his head around it, “This whole thing was what, a giant shopping trip?”  
“You could call it that,” Fen replied. “I call it a wedding present.” He and Amborella rubbed noses, obnoxiously cute. Lestat blenched.  
“Glad I could be your guinea pig!” he complained.  
“So you had a lousy fortnight,” Amborella responded. “It was going to happen sooner or later. Science has known about the similarities between the porphyrin rings for over a hundred years. Nuclear fission has been understood for decades. Honestly, this collision has been overdue for more than a century, since Stoker published his novel the year before Curié discovered radium. It was going to happen sooner or later… just imagine if it hadn’t been us.”  
“You do have a point,” Lestat said, carefully concealing his thoughts, as a vague shimmer of fatigue washed through him.  
“The dawn is coming,” he said. “There are mortal beds here, you are welcome to them.”  
“Deal,” Courtesan said, yawning. He rose. “You coming?” he said to Amborella and Fen.  
“In a minute,” she replied. and the others disappeared into the shadows.  
“I must sleep,” Lestat said. “Will you wait for me tomorrow night?”  
“Yes.”  
“Well then,” he said. “You know everything else, you might as well know this too.” He led them to a chamber containing a huge, ornate marble sarcophagus and pushed back its carved-stone lid. He climbed inside, lay down on the quilted velvet lining.  
“I'm trusting you,” he said.  
“I know. We trust each other.” Amborella replied. Lestat’s expression slackened, his eyes glazed over, and he was gone, asleep. Together, Amborella and Fen managed to push the stone back in place. Amborella turned, intending to go find a bedroom, but found her way blocked by Fen.  
“Oh. Hi,” she said.  
“Hi.”  
“Suppose there’s an extra bed somewhere?” Amborella said. “Suppose it’s in a private room?”  
“Who needs a bed?” Fen said, removing his jacket and throwing it up on top of the sarcophagus.  
“What, here?” Amborella said.  
“It’s been too long,” Fen said, “And I am so tired of sharing you with another man.” He lifted her bottom onto the sarcophagus, then hopped up next to her, pushing her back onto his jacket.  
“Fen, stop it!” Amborella mock-protested. “Stop it! Oh,” she sighed. “Stop it some more!”  



	15. FAREWELL

The marquee of the Galaxy Cinema once more proclaimed _Lestat de Lioncourt un-live!_ and on the stage Amborella, in a floor-length gown of black silk and sewn eel-skins, a jeweled black veil tucked into the low chignon at the base of her neck, and Lestat, in a black velvet suit, advanced upon one another, singing a stately, operatic duet about saying goodbye, their voices spiraling to the rafters, bringing the audience to tears. The song over, they embraced, the audience cheered, and the movie began, even as the ink on Cynthia’s petition to the Supreme Court asking Vampire-Americans be granted full rights as citizens was still drying.

As the audience fell into their interaction with the movie, Amborella led Lestat behind the screen and into the alley behind the theater, where Brian waited with Courtesan, Fen and the luggage. “Well, this is it,” Amborella said, tucking the deed to Oakley Court into her pocket.  
"You really can’t stay?” Lestat asked.  
“No, we’ve been away too long as it is,” Amborella said. “Besides, I have a promise to fulfill.”  
Lestat looked at Fen. “I see,” said the vampire.  
“But I'll tell you what,” she added. “If you ever get your movie in the Real World, I'll come back. How's that?”  
Fen stepped forward, handed Lestat a folded note. “I, uh, wrote this for you,” he said shyly. “Do me a favor, don’t read it until we’re gone, okay?” Touched, Lestat nodded.  
“Is a spaceship going to pick you up?” he asked. “Do you have to go somewhere special?”  
“No, this is good. Goodbye.”Amborella said.  
“Oh, hey, wait.” Lestat said. “I meant to ask you. About that first movie.”  
“Fir...you mean _Rocky Horror?”_  
“Yes.”  
“Oh,” Amborella thought for a moment. “The Queen of Transexual put images in Richard O'Brien's head while he slept. But that's another story.” And she stepped over to the alien men, and she, Fen and Courtesan began to fragment, breaking up into thousands of tiny particles, until a gust of wind swept them up,  
into the night.  
"Wow,” Lestat said, his heart swelling.  
What does the note say?” Brian asked. Sniffing back tears, Lestat ripped it open.  
“Why, you...you little fucker!” he exclaimed. Brian stared. Lestat held out the note. “‘We had sex on your coffin while you slept,’” he read. Brian laughed, and Cynthia stuck her head out of the alleyway door.  
“Lestat? You’re missing your movie,” she said.  
  
Together, Lestat and Brian re-entered the cinema, Brian taking a seat next to Cynthia, Lestat remaining off to the side, in the shadows next to the screen. He pulled the note from his pocket. “‘We had sex on your coffin while you slept,’” he read again, and then, to himself, he added, “And did you there conceive a child, Fen?”  
  
In a bound, he vaulted from where he stood to the front row, landing before a startled Brian and Cynthia.  
“Brian! Cynthia! Get up!” he cried. “We’re going to NASA!”

 

                                                                         THE END

 

_Author's Notes:_

Originally published on Smashwords.com under the title _The Midnight Vampire Trap,_ April, 2014.

Funfact: in 1990, Richard O'Brien, author of _The Rocky Horror Picture Show_ leaked a first-draft screenplay of a  
direct _RHPS_ sequel entitled _Revenge of the Old Queen (_ available online) in which he proposed that _RHPS_ was,  
in fact, real.

PSA: If, reader, you ever strike your head hard enough to render yourself unconscious, please do not proceed  
to a courtroom for a production number. Go to an emergency room. Subdural hemotomas can be fatal.


End file.
